


the rabbit's foot

by apollothyme, thesilverwitch



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Police, M/M, Mentions of blood and torture -- nothing too graphic, Murder Mystery, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollothyme/pseuds/apollothyme, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He opened the case folder and saw what the fuss was all about. A German businessman had turned in his resignation early and now needed protection against his past employees. Apparently the last guy who’d resigned had gotten a bullet through the eyes, and this Toni Kroos was afraid of the same thing happening to him. In return for his protection, he was willing to stand in court against his old company.</p><p>Isco frowned. It was a goddamn <i>babysitting</i> job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arganzuela

**Author's Note:**

> Just so we're all clear, this story is more of a Brooklyn 99 & Hawaii Five-0 AU than it is a real cops AU since a) I don't know anything about the Spanish law enforcement system and b) a lot of this is self-indulgent platonic cuddling and I needed a way to justify that.

The heat was the problem. It was sweltering and fetid, a weight in the air that infiltrated through their pores, poisoning them with strings of warm honey that clogged their veins.

It made it impossible to think. Isco’s brain had slowed down to a snail’s pace and he had to pinch himself every so often to bring it back to speed. Droplets of sweat formed in the crust of his hairline and were dragged down by gravity. They trailed a lazy path through his forehead, down the lines of his jaw, until they combined on the tip of his chin and waited, like comets on the edge of the universe, to fall down.

Isco wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt, but he knew the effort was useless. Every bit of him was disgusting and wet. He reeked as well, but thankfully he’d lost his sense of smell a while ago. He used to prefer summer over winter when he was a kid, lived to drag himself down to the beach and run towards the waves. Now, stuck in a car with no air conditioning, waiting under the unforgiving sun for some low-level drug dealer to meet up with his supplier, he was rethinking his choices.

“We’re going to die. Heat stroke or spontaneous combustion. I can feel it,” the person to his left said. Isco snorted. James was usually the more level-headed of the two of them, but even this the heat was disrupting.

“We’re young, talented and beautiful cops. People like us do not die of heat strokes,” Isco argued.

“What about spontaneous combustion?” 

Isco thought about it. Spontaneous combustion wasn’t as cool as a dramatic death jumping off a building to save a baby or a shootout with a major drug lord, but it did involve fire, which earned it some points. “I’ll allow it, but only if we’re doing something cool while it happens, which disqualifies sitting in your poor excuse for a car waiting for Shit Face Miguel to come in.”

Shit Face Miguel was the low-level drug dealer he and James had been trailing for the past three weeks. His nickname was quite special, having both metaphorical and physical qualities. Metaphorical in the sense that he was a drug dealer who jerked off to hentai on a kiddy laptop he stole from one of his client’s children, and physical, from that time he tripped and fell face first into a pile of dog shit.

Isco was particularly fond of the nickname and all its layers. James thought they needed to get better hobbies.

“This is not a poor excuse for a car,” said James. Isco let his head roll to the side, where it fell against the pane of the window, scalding his forehead. He grinned. “This car has character. It has a story and a soul. This car is special.”

Isco didn’t have to look at him to know James was stroking the wheel as he spoke.

As James’ rattled on about how his car was one of the seven wonders of the world, Isco tuned him out, letting the words trail into his ears like a lullaby. They’d had this same fight a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times by now. It happened every time they were in James’ car at the same time. This was about every day, sometimes twice a day, since it was their main source of transportation.

“This car is your baby,” Isco said, breaking through James’ rambling. His eyes focused on a lady across the street. She was carrying a large purse and her clothes were oversized, her hair a bit too big and puffy to be real. A person could hide a lot of things in an outfit like that if they were smart, but just as Isco began to straighten up she went into a hairdressing saloon. Isco slumped in the seat again.

“Don’t say that. I don’t wanna become one of those guys totally obsessed with his car.”

Isco turned and lifted a single eyebrow, an act that had taken him hours of practice, every single one of them worth it, to perfect.

“I’m not obsessed. I respect this car; treasure it even. I don’t obsess over it,” James said. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white. It took him a second to smooth his grip and go back to stroking the leather with the back of his index fingers.

“That’s exactly what someone obsessed with their car would say,” Isco pointed out, waving his finger in front of James face before his partner caught it in his darker hands.

He brought his hands down to his lap, Isco’s still trapped between them. One of his fingers rubbed a gentle circle around the knuckle of Isco’s middle finger. Isco’s hand twitched, causing James to press down and smooth out the skin with his fingers.

“Your face is turning red,” James pointed out, smiling at Isco, who turned his face away to stare straight ahead.

He already knew James’ smile by heart at this point. It was bright, the kind that makes you feel like you’re staring directly at the sun, and it took over his whole face. There were times when Isco hated being the focus of it. Mainly when he was feeling terrible for whatever reason, wanted to be left alone and, instead, had to deal with James’ beam of honesty and warmth.

He didn’t hate his smile now.

“That’s because of the heat. It’s at least thirty-five degrees in your car right now,” he said.

“Thirty-three, actually, but you were pretty close,” James admitted.

He didn’t release Isco’s hand and Isco didn’t make any effort to pull it away either until his eyes caught Shit Face Miguel entering the hairdressing saloon.

“Hey, that’s our guy,” Isco said. His right hand felt for the gun locked in his belt. 

“Shit. In the saloon? Should we call for backup?” James asked.

Isco shook his head. “There’s not enough time. Shit Face and his supplier will be gone by the time anyone gets here. Come on.”

He glanced through the window of the hairdressing saloon before stepping inside, right hand over his gun and left holding up his badge for everyone to see. “I’m officer Isco Alarcón from the Policía Municipal. Where’s the man who came in here a minute ago?” he asked the room at large.

All the people there were women, who stared at him like he was a two-headed ghost, none of them moving a centimeter. Isco flexed the fingers of his left hand, his grip releasing before he caught it again and put his badge back in his belt.

James had gone off to the left, passing by a woman with tin foil in her hair, a magazine in her hands and an open mouth. He apologized as he bumped into her. A smile caressed his lips until he looked up.

“Isco, there’s another room here,” James called out, drawing out his gun.

Isco looked at the room. There were six women there and Isco didn’t want to send them out. The chances of one of them having useful information were pretty high, but at the same time it was a liability to have them around.

“Alright, everyone out. Now!” he shouted. The women obeyed immediately, filtering towards the street.

James led the way as they entered a thin hallway. Their pace was light, their weight moving from their heels to the balls of their feet so as to make the less amount of noise possible. A drop of sweat fell into Isco’s eyes and he cleaned it promptly. He hated summer and he hated this heat.

The hallway they were in was completely unremarkable. The floor had checkered tiles and there were paintings of the ocean on the walls, as if someone had tried to create the allusion they were near the sea. On the other end was a white wooden door slightly ajar, which they pushed open at the same time.

They were greeted by the lovely sight they had accounted for. There was the women from before, now rid of all her baggy clothes and wig, and Shit Face Miguel.

What they hadn’t accounted for was the second woman.

Isco yelled, “Hands in the air where I can see them,” but obviously no one listened to him. The life of a cop could never be that easy.

Shit Face Miguel, who had already proved multiple times not to be the smartest apple in the bunch, went straight at them like some kind of idiot bull. He was hindered by the facts that he was shorter than both Isco and James by ten centimeters, going bald and had a bad knee from a previous run-in with the police. Isco almost felt bad when the sole of his feet connected with Shit Face Miguel’s bad knee. Almost.

Shit Face Miguel’s actions were predictable, but nonetheless they were enough to throw he and James off.

One of the women went through a second door to their right while the other jumped through an open window. “Window,” was all James needed to say.

Isco jumped out the window after the woman they hadn’t accounted for. He was faster than her, but speed didn’t help in a crowded street. He lost track of her when they ran into an intersection. The street expanded into three different directions and he couldn’t see very far, his vision blurred by the massive heat that seemed to trap Madrid in its cruel bubble.

He tried to ask a couple of people if they’d seen a woman running for a life out of jail, but Madrid was Madrid, and he was met with nothing but, “Sorry, I don’t know.”

Isco sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pulling the tips for a second before he got a grip on himself. This was fine. They still had her accomplice and Shit Face Miguel. They’d catch the second woman later. 

He walked back where he came from, climbed through the window and saw only James standing there. Shit Face was still on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back, moaning in pain like the little shit that he was. He didn’t need to hear from James to know what happened, but his partner still said it anyway.

“She had a car waiting for her at the end of the alley. I got the plate, but…” he trailed off and Isco filled the silence for him.

“It’s probably stolen and will lead to a dead-end like everything else in this case seems to.”

Isco kicked one of the chairs in the room and a bolt of pain shot up his feet. He hissed, pulling back the chair so he could sit on it. He put his gun back in its holster and squeezed the top of his knees, scrunching the fabric of his old jeans.

He’d fucked up. They should have waited for backup, waited for orders. They shouldn’t have rushed in without a plan and direction. He was the one who made the call, so this was his fault. He was always the one doing this, always rushing and not thinking properly. And the heat—the stupid heat was still digging into his skin and clawing at him.

If there was ever a moment to die of spontaneous combustion, this was it.

“It will be fine,” James said, but Isco could tell not even he believed it. “We’ve still got Miguel and I think I got a good look at one of the women that ran away.”

Isco looked up so he could face his partner. He knew how he had to look, drenched in his own sweat and glowering in anger. James winced.

“I fucked up,” he said.

“We fucked up,” James corrected without missing a beat.

Isco shook his head. That wasn’t much of a comfort.

———

“You fucked up,” Iker said, then winced at the sound of his own words. “I know you were doing what you thought you had to do, but you should have called for backup, boys.”

Isco didn’t even have it in him to frown at their captain for calling them ‘boys’. He kept his eyes locked on a swirl in Iker’s wooden desk. His hands grasped one another in his lap. One of James’ knees pressed into his.

“We’re sorry, Iker,” James said for the both of them.

Isco imagined Iker shaking his head as if to say, ‘that isn’t enough’ as he was not so cruel as to voice the thought out loud. It’d be fair if he said though. It’d be the truth.

“I know. And if the call was just mine to make, I’d have you both doing paperwork for a week and then out on the streets to fix what you messed up. But unfortunately there are higher powers at work,” Iker huffed, and Isco chanced a small grin. Higher powers meant politics and people who didn’t know any better butting in where they shouldn’t, which in turn got them a grumpy captain. “There’s not much I can do.”

Isco nodded, eyes still focused on the same piece of wood. Iker’s desk was the best in all the precinct. It was made of real cherry wood that revealed intricate patterns in all its constitution, swirls and twirls running after one another. The rest of his office was as impressive. There was a bookshelf behind the desk with an endless list of titles. Isco had never been able to tell if they were only there for show or if Iker had really read them. The walls were white, decorated with paintings from a local artist, and the windows gave a perfect view of Ronda de Toledo beneath them.

It was the kind of office Isco dreamed of having if he ever made it to captain.

“So what happens now?” James asked. Isco should say something at some point. James was the youngest out of the two of them and the rookie, since he’d joined the force only six months ago. Isco should be helping him, not staring at some piece of wood like it held the secrets to the universe.

“Well, for starters you’re off the case. You’ll need to hand over everything you have to Marcelo and Ronaldo—“

“Captain,” Isco said, finally looking up. This wasn’t right. They’d worked their asses off for this case, spending whole afternoons under the scorching heat trailing Shit Face Miguel and his buddies.

“This is not negotiable, Isco.” The disapproval in Iker's face was painted in ink, but his eyes were not unkind. “You’re both off the case. James, you’ll be working with Xabi for the next three weeks. He’s been shadowing a politician and it might do you some good to work with a more senior officer. Isco, you’ll be working with Modrić. He’s organizing the archives.”

Isco chanced a look at James, who was staring at Iker with his mouth open and a look of betrayal that could rival Caesar’s. Isco made sure that his own face showed nothing. If he was gonna do old paperwork, the least he could do was leave the damn office with the remaining shreds of his dignity and his head held high.

He nodded and got up, one hand trailing James’ shoulder. It wasn’t a comforting gesture, more of a simple ‘I’m here’.

James followed him out and they walked to their respective desks, which faced one another. Isco looked at the paperwork spread on the countertop and thought about delivering it to Marcelo and Ronaldo today, then turned to James and said, “I’m getting piss drunk at Agua del Río. You in?”

“It’s seven in the afternoon.” James stared at Isco as if he’d taken an LSD pill on the short walk from Iker's office to their space.

Isco shrugged as he slipped on his coat. “I’m not doing any more work today. Are you?” 

James glanced over at Xabi’s desk, which was the neatest, most well-organized corner in the entire building. For heaven’s sake, the desk surface even polished.

“Let’s go,” James said. “You’re buying the first round.”

Agua del Río was the bar next to their precinct in Arganzuela. It was frequented by cops, their friends and their family as well as tourists who didn’t know there was a police precinct twenty meters from the bar. Isco liked the place. It had an American vibe to it, with its dark walls and large booths. Mostly, he liked the privacy it gave, all the corners to hide in.

They picked a table near the back and despite his request from earlier, James was the one who headed to the counter while Isco contemplated his poor life choices. 

He was picking a loose piece of wood from the table when his ex-partner returned carrying four mugs of beer. Isco’s eyebrows shot up.

“You’re taking piss drunk more seriously than I expected,” he said.

“You ask and you shall receive,” James said, grinning at him. That sentence carried more on its back than Isco was willing to examine, so he ignored it, picking up a mug and downing half its contents in one go.

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and all that,” he said when he was done.

This time, it was James turn to shoot up his eyebrows. He glanced at his own mug and Isco felt relieved, a sigh escaping his lips, when James didn’t imitate him and instead took only a small sip.

They stayed in silence for a while, which Isco relished. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, knowing the discussion would surely lead to his own failures and his inability to deal with them. James must have sensed this, because he went right ahead and asked, “How are you feeling?”

Isco stopped drawing patterns on the water condensing around his glass cup to frown at James.

“Just peachy. You?”

“I’m thinking I should buy a tie if I’m going to work with Xabi. He seems like the type who demands his partners dress up.”

Isco’s mood lifted, but his frown grew sharper as he squinted at his friend. “You don’t own a tie?”

“I own a tie, but I should probably own more than one. I can’t wear the same one every day.”

“You can’t wear the same two either. You should have seven, one for every day of the week.”

James looked at him as if Isco had just revealed himself to be the second coming of Jesus, keeper of the great secrets of the world. “How come I hadn’t thought of that before?” he asked, more as something to throw into the air than as an actual question.

Bitterly, and not without regret, Isco thought that maybe time apart working with other people would do them both some good. Then he picked up his mug and downed the rest of its contents. This wasn’t the time to be mature and responsible, much less in touch with his emotions. This was the time to get drunk and contemplate human hibernation.

“You’re gonna throw up if you keep going like that,” James told him.

“Fuck throwing up,” Isco replied, with more vehemence than necessary. Instead of hardening, James' eyes softened and Isco felt himself being looked at with pity, which only made him angrier. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. He could feel the nails in his head begin to loosen, the tip of his fingers numbing. Tipsy. He was tipsy.

“Then don’t act like a sad, twelve-year-old kid whose parents just divorced and who only listens to Metallica because he thinks they’re edgy,” said James. His tone was mocking, but a mocking James was such a ridiculous concept that Isco couldn't take him seriously.

Isco hid his face behind his hands and smiled into his palms. He wanted to cry and to rage at the same time. Instead, he laughed until his corners came unstitched and he felt like he could breathe again.

“I’m sorry. I’m acting like a jackass,” he said.

“It’s alright. Hey—” James’ foot knocked against his underneath their table— “what are friends for?”

James smiled at him. It was his usual sunny smile. Isco had an urge to shield his eyes.

“Let’s change the subject, so you can tell me how you’ve managed to spend twenty-five years on this earth owning only one tie. I could swear I’ve seen you wear others.”

James coughed and looked to the side, scratching the back of his neck as he said, “I borrow some from my neighbor sometimes.”

Even though he couldn’t see it underneath the dim lights, Isco could swear James was blushing, which only added to the ridicule.

“Oh my god, you’re an adult! You should own ties, plural!” 

“I’m a cop! Cops don’t wear suits a lot. I have one for court and that’s it. Anyway, what about you?”

Isco leaned back. “I told you, I own seven ties. One for every day of the week,” Isco said with the kind of confidence and pride only drunk men can muster, making James to roll his eyes at him and take a sip of his beer.

“No, not that. I meant what about you working with Modrić,” he explained.

“I like Modrić,” Isco’s brain supplied, as poignant as ever, jumping on the defensive for him before he can come up with an actually smart reply.

“Like him enough to look forward to working at the archives for three weeks?” 

“Do _you_ like Xabi enough to look forward to wearing a tie for three weeks?” countered Isco.

“Touché,” said James, making them both laugh. They lifted their mugs in the air so they could knock them together before taking a large mouthful each.

The second round, just one beer this time, was on Isco. He dragged his feet to the bar and asked for some toast while he was at it because he was responsible drinker, and responsible drinkers don’t get wasted on an empty stomach. Also, he was always in the mood for toast. It was like normal bread, but better.

The third round was on Sergio Ramos, who was technically their superior, but who had also had a shitty week and wanted to drown it in alcohol. Isco would make a comment about trouble in paradise, but even his drunk self had enough awareness to not go anywhere near that subject. 

The fourth and fifth rounds were on someone. Probably. Isco was sure someone bought him his beer and he didn't steal it from anyone. Then again, such details tended to lose meaning when one was going through the arduous process of getting piss drunk.

There was no sixth round, thank the heavens, because James was a light-weight and, if he was honest, Isco wasn’t that better himself. Isco pulled a cab over for both of them, giving the driver his address. It was easier and cheaper this way, not to mention it wasn't as if James hadn’t crashed on his couch countless times by now.

They walked with their weight leaning on each other like Leaning Towers of Drunk Pisa. When they got to the door, Isco took his keys out, dropped them when trying to fit them into the keyhole then almost fell himself when trying to pick them up. James just laughed.

“We accomplished our mission!” James yelled, whooping with joy and waking up half the neighborhood.

Isco stared at him, taking a few seconds to remember what his friend was talking about. He felt as if real, genuine lightbulb turned on when he finally got it, the world becoming clearer for a moment before dwindling again. “We did!”

James nodded, his arm slung around Isco’s shoulders, his head dropping to fit in the crook of Isco’s neck. “Go us,” he cheered. Isco laughed.

When they finally got inside and reached the bottom of the stone staircase, reaching upward and seemingly never-ending, Isco was once again reminded why the rent on his fourth-floor apartment was so cheap.

James groaned. “Can I sleep on the floor? I promise I won’t throw up.”

Isco pushed him towards the stairs and then had to grab his arms to steady him when James almost fell on his face. “No way, my landlord would kill me. Your gym routine is way worse than this anyway.” Isco looked up and bit his tongue. “It’s just four little floors. It’s not that bad.”

It was definitely that bad.

By the time they got to the third landing, James had almost fallen four times, Isco twice and they were both panting as if they’d ran a marathon through the Sahara. 

“Isco, I can’t go on. Just leave me here, please.”

Isco rolled his eyes and grunted, “I told you, you can’t sleep on the floor.” Isco reached down to pull James up from where he was sitting, but the asshole used the grip to pull him down, making him fall onto his resting body. “You’re a sweet-faced, conniving son of a bitch and I can see right through your despicable lies,” Isco said.

“Shut up and just sit here for a while,” James replied.

Isco moved until they were sitting sat by side, then laid his head on James’ shoulder. The position was uncomfortable and made him feel queasy. He didn’t shift into another stance.

Eventually, completely without Isco’s approval, Isco’s eyes closed and his head slipped from James’ shoulders to his lap. “If my neighbors see us, I’m telling them this is a police trust exercise,” he said. He wasn’t embarrassed to be caught cuddling up to James, but at this point he had his face shoved against James’ crotch and a line needed to be drawn somewhere.

“Okay,” James replied. He didn’t seemed all that bothered by Isco’s face near his crotch. Good. This was what real friends were for.

They sat there for who knows how long, until Isco felt his limbs growing as heavy as lead and pushed himself up. “No sleeping on the floor. Jesus Christ, I have a bed twenty meters from here.”

“Can I have it?” James asked. Isco knew it wasn’t a real question. James’ eyes were closed and as he got up he groaned and moaned like he was an old man with arthritis. He hadn’t paid attention to the words slipping from his mouth, but still they made Isco pause, stare at his friend—at his best friend, truth be told—and think about what he said.

He could, was the thing. Well, they could share it. Isco wasn’t sleeping on the couch in his own apartment without good reason. But they could definitely share it if that was what James wanted. It would complicate their relationship, but looking at James, who was a conniving ray of solidified sunshine, always worked hard and made Isco laugh; who was his best friend — Isco knew they could make it work.

He took a step closer and one of James’ hands automatically reached for him, gripping his shoulders. Isco looked down at James’ lips. They were soft and plump. He wondered what kissing them would feel like, if James would allow himself to be pushed against the wall or if he’d be the one pushing Isco. He wondered if it’d be good to have their first kiss like this.

One of Isco’s hand reached for James’ waist. James smiled at him, but it wasn’t his normal grin. This smile was dopey, crooked to one side and not so bright.

James was drunk. They both were.

Isco moved to step away, but James’ hand kept him in place. James’ smile was tip-sided but confident. James leaned forward and words began to pile up in Isco’s throat. He had to say something. Isco opened his mouth. What came out was, “I’m sorry.”

James looked down at him with confusion written on his expression. He looked like a puppy when he was like this. It was the eyes. They had a softness to them that reminded you of soft baby animals.

“For everything that happened with the Shit Face case. I should have known better.” The words stumbled out of Isco’s mouth. They weren’t what he had meant to say, but they’d been biting at him for the past hours too.

James snorted. “It wasn’t your fault, Isco. We both did what we thought was right. And don’t bother pulling the ‘I’m the senior officer card’. You’re my senior by like, six months.”

“Still,” Isco tried to argue.

“Still nothing. Now, come on. Show me that glorious couch of yours that is oh, so much better than the floor.”

Isco poked James and watched him flail as he tried to get away. “It’s a couch, of course it’s better than the floor.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” James replied.

Isco leaved James by the couch with two blankets, a bottle of water and a loaf of bread in case he got hungry during the night. Never let it be said that he wasn’t a good host.

James laughed at the sight of the bread and pulled Isco into a hug that made them both fall in each other’s arms, still heavy limbed. 

“It’s really not your fault, you know,” he said.

Isco hide his smile against James’ shoulder. “I know, you crowd pleaser.”

James laughed and shook his head, but he didn’t deny it. “Goodnight, Isco.”

Isco patted him on the back and kissed him on the cheek like friends did. “Goodnight.”

They arrived at work at the same time next morning nursing two spectacular hangovers. James wore a jacket and tie Isco had lent him. Isco contemplated how many espressos it took to kill a man.

He hadn’t brought up their almost kiss from last night while they were getting ready for work. James hadn’t either and morning light, with its transparent flesh and cooling effect, had made Isco realize some things were better left untouched.

He got a pat on the back from James when he didn’t step out of the elevator with him on their floor. Isco gave him a thumbs up, tried to smile and ended up grimacing, which was fine. The point was that he tried.

The elevator took its time to do its rounds and leave everyone in their floors, so that by the time Isco finally got to the archives in the basement, he was just about ready to call it a day and head home. Seeing Modrić, who had broken his leg in three places last month and needed three months of rehab, genuinely happy to have company helped Isco’s mood, but it wasn’t a miracle cure.

The archives were a depressing place, covered in dust and illuminated with fluorescent lighting that burned the skin on the retina. Isco did not become a cop to spend hours locked away beneath the ground sorting through paperwork, not to mention time seemed to go slower down there. It only took one hour for him to become restless, his legs twitching as if he had a motor disease, and another one for Isco to decide he and Modrić needed to go out for some fresh air and _tapas_.

“But we’ve only been here for two hours,” Modrić tried to argue, looking at Isco as if the dust had affected his brain while Isco looked around for Modrić’s crutches.

“Two hours in real time, which is what you experience upstairs. Down here it’s been at least five. Also,” Isco thrust Modrić’s crutches at the man and lifted him from his chair, “all this stale air. It can’t be good for your recovery. When we get back I’m opening some windows.”

“This place has windows?” asked Modrić. Isco followed his line of sight to stare at the walls, grim with dust. He was sure he’d seen a window near the door when he’d entered.

“Probably. We’ll find them later. Now let’s go, I need some fresh air.”

He texted James that they were going out for a bite to eat and his ex-partner texted back ‘Xabi has me checking surveillance footage from Lucho’s house… ZZzzzzzzzz…’ so that settled that.

He took Modrić out to his favorite _tapas_ place near work, figuring they both deserved a little treat for their extraneous work. No one in their line of duty was fond of doing paperwork, not even Modrić, who was quiet and seemed to go through life as a leaf adrift at sea, guided by the current. Isco had never talked to him much, but he enjoyed doing it now. It beat working by a long shot and made the upcoming three weeks seem less dreadful.

This, however, was not to say Isco didn’t let out an enormous whoop of joy when he found out Iker wanted to give him a new assignment. 

“I’m really sorry, man,” he told Modrić, ashamed that he was abandoning a fellow brother in the line of fire.

“It’s okay, I understand. Go. Live your life. Smell freedom once more,” Modrić wiped away a fake tear and Isco had to hide a smile behind his hand. 

“I’ll come back for you,” he said when he could keep a straight face again. “With cookies, beer and gossip from the above ground world.”

Modrić shook his head and looked away. His long hair fell in his eyes, but he didn’t brush it off. “Don’t forget what we went through down here,” he said.

“I won’t. I promise you I won’t.” Isco took Modrić’s hands in his and stared at the Croatian for a good five seconds before the two of them burst into laughter.

“Are you guys done?” James asked from the doorway, where he’d been watching the scene unfold after telling Isco the good news.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Isco got his jacket from his chair and pocketed his cell phone. “But seriously, call if you need anything. I’ll be around.”

Modrić nodded and flashed him a thankful smile when Isco saluted him. 

Isco walked out side by side with James, who was giving him a quizzical smile and examining Isco as if he’d never seen him before.

“What?” Isco asked after he checked that he didn’t have any bits of food stuck to his beard and he wasn’t wearing any of his clothes backwards.

“Nothing, just admiring you and your acting skills. Were you in any plays during high school?” James asked, that wide-eyed innocent look adorning his face. Isco hit him with his elbow.

“Oh please, you try working down there for three weeks while keeping sane at the same time and tell me how it goes,” said Isco, walking in front of James when the elevator doors opened. “Also, yes, I was. One of  García Lorca’s plays,  not that that’s any of your business,” he added in a proud, but still low so no one else could hear him, voice.

James was still laughing when they entered Iker's office. Iker smiled at them in the same fond way he smiled at little kids and Sergio, but chose not to comment on their antics. “Take a seat, please,” he said. He started to talk the second they were both sat. “As you know, Marcelo and Ronaldo solved the Miguel Rabanas case. Turns out the lady who owned the hairdressing saloon knew more than she initially let on. Without the work you two did, they would have never finished the case, and I know you’ve both been doing a good job these past two weeks as well.”

Isco smirked at that. From what James had told him, he’d spent the past days watching surveillance footage, tracking a politician whose idea of ‘fun’ was drinking a martini instead of a scotch on ice and writing reports on all this.

Isco hadn’t done much better. That was unless you counted creating a new filing system based on how stupid the crimes committed were as a ‘good job’, which Isco did.

“Which is why I’m giving you a new case,” Iker continued. “You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. You can always go back to what you’re doing now.”

Iker gave them a look that suggested they’d be idiots if he they did so, but Isco was still awry when he picked up the folder laid in front of him.

It was a thick, manilla envelope with a nondescript cover, meaning a lot of research work had gone into it. Were they giving them a case that had already been worked? Isco preferred fresh cases, but he wouldn’t mind working this one if it meant going back to grand theft or drugs.

He opened the folder and skimmed the first pages.

“Seriously?” he asked Iker after he’d closed the file. He glanced over at James, who had the same skeptical expression on his face.

“You can take it or you can leave it. It’s your choice,” Iker said. He flourished his hands as if to say the ball was on their court.

Isco had an urge to slump in his seat like a petulant child and pout. He resisted it and opened the file again.

It was a babysitting job. A German businessman had turned in his resignation unexpectedly and now needed protection against his past employees. Apparently the last guy who resigned received a bullet through the eyes, and this Toni Kroos was afraid of the same thing happening to him. In return for protection, he was willing to stand in court against his old company, who seemed to be the living embodiment of the term ‘shady’.

“What does this have to do with us?” Isco asked. “Can’t the Germans protect him?”

Iker shook his head, leaning back on his seat. “BayernM is a company with a lot of connections. The Germans feel like he’d be safer here with us.”

“And what are we getting in return?” Another captain might not have received the abruptness of James’ question as well Iker did, even though it was an appropriate inquiry. They lived in the real world, not in the ‘happy to help the Germans whenever’ world.

“A chance to be part of one of the biggest cases of the year, maybe the decade,” said Iker. He smirked. Isco let out a low whistle.

“This man is that important?” James asked. Isco ogled the picture of the man in the file. He was attractive if you were into blue-eyed, blonde Germans, which Isco was, but he didn’t look that remarkable or impressive. There was a softness to him. A look of care.

Iker shrugged. “It seems so. His family has been connected to the company since its creation and he was one of the main members of the board before he quit. The Germans want to go to court in six months’ time. Keep him safe and sound until then and you might be looking at a promotion.”

James and Isco looked at each other. They knew each other well enough to have a simple conversation with their eyes, the use of words unnecessary.

Isco lifted his eyebrow. James bit his bottom lip.

“Would we be able to work other cases at the same time?” James asked.

Iker's reply was immediate. “Depends on how this unravels, but for now, no.”

The right corner of James’ mouth pulled down. Isco stroked his beard. They’d probably be back at their regular desk jobs in a month at most if they refused this job. But they could also stick with this for six months, get a pay raise and then buy a bar.

Isco lifted his other eyebrow.

“We’ll do it,” James said.

Isco nodded and Iker grinned at them both.

“Excellent. Kroos is on the six p.m. plane this Friday. Be there to pick him up. The rest of the information you need is in that file,” he said.

They took their respective envelopes and left. James looked at his feet as he walked, lost in thought, while Isco stared straight ahead. He thought about whether this case would prove as boring as most babysitting details did or if it would end up surprising him.

As any young cop would, he hoped for a something fun and left his thoughts at that.


	2. Palos de La Frontera

They arrived at the airport thirty minutes before Kroos’ flight was scheduled to land. With them, they carried a white piece of paper and a pencil case full of markers.

“Where did you even get these?” Isco asked. 

“My niece lent them to me. Do you think I should draw a smiley face?” James asked.

Isco stared at him. A smiley felt inappropriate, then again, this guy had been forced to move from his home to another country and would be spending the next few months isolated from all his family and friends. A smiley face might cheer him up.

“Put it next to the flag, but don’t make it too smiley. It might come off as childish.”

James nodded and went back to work. Isco had already filled in Kroos’ name with a simple ‘Toni’ after they both decided it’d be a smarter option to avoid his last name while they were outside in public. Kroos wasn’t in a witness protection program where he needed to change his name and erase everything related to his past life, but being careful never hurt.

The German flag they drew because they were bored and felt like it.

Isco checked his phone for the seventh time and then the monitor that kept track of all the flights. There were still ten minutes to go. He wondered if Kroos would appreciate it if Isco bought him a cup of coffee or if he was one of those uptight Germans who didn’t even acknowledge your presence unless it was extremely necessary.

He checked his phone again and vetoed the coffee idea. He’d buy him a cup later if he asked for one.

“Do you think he’ll be rude? Germans are usually rude, aren’t they?” he asked James, spinning on his feet and leaning against the railing behind him.

The topic of whether or not they’d made the right decision when they took this job had been on his mind for the past few days. A part of him wanted to voice his doubts out loud while another wanted him to shut up. Six months watching over someone didn’t sound like a thrilling prospect when faced with the idea of that someone being an asshole.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just a stereotype. I’m sure he’ll be alright,” James picked up a red marker and drew a tongue on their smiley face.

He didn’t look up after he spoke, but Isco still nodded in reply, more to himself than anything else. If Kroos was willing to risk his life for the sake of going to court against his former employees, which were connected to everything from money laundering to murder, then he couldn’t be so bad.

At twelve past six, Kroos’ plane landed. Isco straightened his posture and looked down at the sign he and James—well, mostly James—had made. It looked like something a seven-year-old would make and it was definitely not appropriate for the situation at hand, but it wasn’t terrible per se.

In any case, they’d only brought one sheet of paper with them so it’d have to do.

“So, you’ll speak to him, right?” Isco asked as he fixed the collar of his leather jacket.

“Me? Why me?” James turned to face him. His voice had gone a notch higher as if his vocal cords had been squeezed and Isco had to disguise a grin behind his hand.

“My English is horrible, remember?”

James’ eyes squinted at him. “I’ve seen you read novels in English before.”

Isco looked away and shrugged, trying to act inconspicuous. “That was one time. Also, reading is one thing, talking is another.”

James’ eyes closed even further until they were nothing but two thin slits of doubt and disbelief. He made that humming noise skeptical aunts in soap operas made when they knew their family was lying.

Isco longed for their first month of working together, when James didn’t know him well enough to call him out on his bullshit. Those had been different days. Easier, but if he was honest, a lot more boring as well.

“Look, I’ll talk to him too. I’m just saying you should do the introductions and all that.”

“Fine,” James sighed. “But your English better improve fast if we’re going to spend the next six months with this guy.”

Isco didn’t reply.

They watched the first passengers begin to trickle out, some alone, others in groups, until the person they were looking for finally walked out.

The first thing Isco noticed about him was that while he was no giant, he was definitely taller than he and James. The second was that his eyes were a shade lighter in real life than they were in the photos he’d seen, and the third was that he looked tired and confused. His under eye circles were dark enough for Isco to notice them from where he was standing and he had this frazzled look to him. His hair sticked out in various directions and his suit, while form-fitting and obviously expensive, was in need of being ironed.

Having to run away from home does that to you.

When Kroos saw their sign, it made him falter in his steps before he continued towards them. As planned, James was the first to speak up. He smiled, flashing his dimples, and raised his hand for Toni to shake. 

“Hello. I’m officer James Rodríguez and this is officer Isco Alarcón. We’ll be your protective detail for the next couple of months.”

“Toni Kroos,” the man said. He had a thick honey accent and his skin shined under the bright airport lights, giving him the typical look of a fumbling tourist underprepared for the Madrid heat.

Nevertheless, his grip when he and Isco shook hands was solid, unwavering, and he walked with his head held high between him and James.

It was as if he’d mentally prepared himself for war and was now marching into the line of battle, terrified but determined.

Isco didn’t know how to make sense of him yet.

The ride towards the apartment they’d picked for Kroos was mostly spent in silence. Isco had expected some questions about where he would be staying and how things would go, but Kroos either didn’t care or already knew. The only time he spoke was when he asked, in hesitant Spanish, if they could turn on the air conditioning.

James and Isco traded a look. Kroos’ file hadn’t said anything about him speaking Spanish, then again, that type of thing was easy to be missed.

James shot Isco a guilty side-ways look. Isco sighed, cursed James’ car to hell and back and said, “No, sorry. Air conditioning is broken. We can open one of the windows if you’d like?”

Kroos stared at him. He didn’t look any better in James’ car than he had looked in the airport. His blue eyes looked watery, his skin pale and sickly. Isco wondered if his knowledge of Spanish was limited to a few lines or if exhaustion was catching up to Kroos and shutting off his thoughts. 

“Yes, please,” he eventually said.

They passed by the Bernabéu to avoid traffic and Isco noticed Kroos staring at the building with something akin to passion. He stared at the stadium until he had to turn his head to keep it in his line of sight, going back to staring with disinterest when they left Paseo de la Castellana.

“Are you a fan?” Isco asked.

Again, it took Kroos a couple of seconds to reply. “Yes. I try to catch their games when I can.”

“Well, you’ll be able to catch all their games now if you’d like. Even attend a few.”

“Am I not…” Kroos hesitated again. Isco saw him mumble the words, catching them in the rhythm of his lips as if he was trying them out before he voiced them out loud, “Prohibited from going to places with a lot of people?”

Isco furrowed his eyebrows, glancing at James to check that they were both on the same page of confusion and turned around in his seat so he could talk to Kroos face to face.

“You’re to avoid tourist spots, where people might search for you, but otherwise you’re allowed to go where you want so long as we can vouch for your safety. This means you can’t go anywhere without letting us know first, and that you can’t draw attention to yourself. I think that’s it, right?” Isco asked, this time to James.

“Pretty much. You also can’t give out your name or willingly put yourself in danger. Did the,” James coughed and pronounced the next word as if he had a lemon in his mouth, “the _Bundesk— Bund—_ the BKA explain how this would work?”

“No?” Kroos looked more confused now than he had in the airport. This held some merit in its own way. Most people had only one expression through which they expressed confusion. Kroos seemed to have a multitude of them.

“So much for German efficiency. We’ll explain the rest when we get to your apartment, okay?” Isco asked. It’d be easier to have this conversation somewhere with air conditioning and food.

“Yes,” Kroos replied. The way he spoke was so formal and rigid, the product of a classroom and not of a lifetime wandering through Spanish streets. Isco considered asking him if he’d ever been to Madrid before, then chose against it. They’d have plenty of time for small chat later.

Kroos went back to watching the buildings and people blur by. Isco pulled out of his phone and searched for the next Real Madrid game. James kept driving.

The apartment they’d picked for Kroos was a two-bedroom between their police precinct and Parque del Retiro in Palos de La Frontera. It had a nice, open living room with a view of the street below, a newly built kitchen and bathroom. Rent was on the pricier side, but the Germans would be paying for that, which was why they’d picked this apartment block with the indoor pool and gym and not the one next to it. 

“Is that allowed?” Kroos asked after they’d finished telling him about all the perks of his new living space. He stood near the window where he could see most of the apartment, while Isco and James waited near the sofas.

“What they don’t know can’t hurt them,” Isco smiled, but Kroos only frowned back at him. Isco backtracked, “I mean, you’re an important key witness, alright? A few extra commodities won’t bankrupt Germany.”

James stared at Isco with a pained expression. Isco waved his hands at him, demonstrating the well-known ‘what do you want me to do’ panic gesture.

He was a train going off the tracks. He’d figured most people would be happy to hear they’d be living somewhere with an indoors pool at their disposal, but of course he had forgotten the tiny detail about how Kroos wasn’t a normal person. He was a man who’d been forced to leave his country—his home—and who probably had five indoor pools back where he came from.

“I’m sorry,” Isco said, settling for a quick bandaid over a wound whose size he didn’t know.

“We can find you another apartment if you’d like,” James added.

“No, no. It’s fine. I am the one who’s sorry. I am tired from the flight and everything else.”

James nodded. “Would you like a tour of the apartment?” 

Kroos looked like he didn’t care less about a tour of the house, but he agreed to it anyway.

While James showed Kroos around, Isco took a look through the living room window at the buildings facing theirs. There was no reason for them to worry and in any case they’d  already checked out all the people living in that street, but still.

After what happened with their last case, Isco was less willing to a mistake.

“You said earlier you would explain better how things will work?” Kroos asked when they were back at the starting point. He took a seat on one of the armchairs while James sat next to Isco on the couch.

“Yes,” James said, stepping in and relieving Isco of his terrible job of explaining things. “As Isco told you, you’re technically not in a witness protection program—“

Kroos interrupted him. “Why not?” 

James glanced at Isco, who twisted the corners of his mouth. They’d thought about this themselves and hadn’t come up with any reasonable answers. It’d have made more sense for the Germans to ask for a credible witness protection program, but they’d failed to do so, which didn’t fall right with Isco. He was on the fence between it being money restrictions or case restrictions.

“The German police didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Lukas— The last man who quit BayernM’s board. He got shot in the head,” Kroos leaned forward in his seat, his hands clasped together in his lap. He looked like he was in a mixed state between wanting to run and punch someone. 

“An accident according to British police,” Isco said. He lifted one of his hands, palm drawn forward in an appeasing gesture. “They can’t connect it to Bayern.”

“So what? You’re just gonna accept that? It’s obvious they did it. They have more illegal schemes in the works than you’d find in a mafia network. They—“ Kroos’ voice rose with every word until James cut him off.

“Hey, we get it and we’re gonna do everything we can to protect you. If you think about it, this is actually better. In a witness protection program it’d be impossible to have an agent with you twenty-four seven, this way we can.”

“Not to mention we’re great company,” Isco added.

His joke was a bit risky, but it made Kroos laugh so Isco counted it as a success. 

There was a slight pink sheen on Kroos’ face and before he spoke again, he had to take a deep breath and run his hands through his hair. “What else? In terms of what I can and can’t do?”

“The main thing is that you can’t go anywhere without letting us know first. We’ll be accompanying you wherever you need to go and we’ll take shifts sleeping here at night. You can’t invite people over and in general it’s preferable if you don’t talk to people.”

Kroos nodded. “Anything else?”

“That’s the gist of it. We’ll need to avoid tourist spots, and you might have to wear a lot of sunglasses and hats. Also, if you see anyone from Bayern here or if you’re worried for any reason, you have to speak to us immediately. I know it will be hard, but you’ll have to trust us unconditionally for the next six months,” Isco said. He knew how much he was asking of the man, how hard it’d be to trust two people you didn’t knew in a situation like this, but they all needed to work together if they wanted to ensure Kroos’ safety.

“Okay,” Kroos agreed, serious and businesslike before he scratched the back of his neck. He  dropped his head and took a stuttering breath before he looked up. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I would like to go to bed now.”

“Don’t you want to eat something first? It’s only half past seven,” James said, looking at Kroos with the same kind of worried mother hen look he gave children involved in a case.

Isco knew he couldn’t even mock James for it because he was sure he looked the same. If this were any other situation, he’d be dragging Kroos in for a hug and some chocolate ice cream.

“No, thank you,” Kroos said. Without waiting for them to say anything else, he got up and went to his bedroom.

After he was gone, James turned to Isco and said, “I can take the first shift if you’d like.”

Isco rolled his eyes. “We agreed that I’d take the first three nights. It’s fine.”

“He’s not exactly very talkative,” James said. He didn’t sound judgmental or offended, but then again, he rarely did. He was simply stating a fact and trying to catch how Isco felt about it. 

Isco knew how he could be sometimes. He was a sociable person, got along great with most people, but of course there were always exceptions. He disliked know-it-alls, pretentious scumbags and people oblivious to the consequences of their actions and no, he didn’t miss how that kind of made him a hypocrite. He didn’t like people who always looked like they were hiding something, his cop instinct making him naturally wary, and he wasn’t fond of people who kept to themselves in social situations either, although that was more of a pet peeve than anything else.

James was trying to find if Kroos fell under any of those categories for him.

Truth be told, Kroos would have fallen there if they’d have met under normal circumstances, but these weren’t normal circumstances.

“He seems alright. He’s clearly shaken up and on edge, but it’d be weird if he wasn’t,” Isco said, staring at the blank television screen. “So yeah, he’s alright.”

James didn’t say anything for a while, so Isco chanced a look at him and saw James pretend to wipe away some tears. “Look at you, all grown up—“

“Oh, shut the fuck up. I’m the senior officer—“

“I’m older than you though—“

“Senior offi—“

“Okay, shut up,” James put his hands over Isco’s mouth and the only reason why Isco didn’t lick them was because he didn’t know where those hands had been and he loved himself too much to lick dirty hands. “I’m leaving now. I’ll come back tomorrow with food and DVDs.”

“Fine. Bye, grandpa,” Isco said, grinning when James shot him an offended look.

He spent the next couple of hours watching television. He, unlike Kroos, was hungry, but he didn’t want to bother the guy after everything that happened so he sucked it up and made due with the candy bar in his leather jacket with a year-old expiration date.

If he could survive a two-hour seminar by Arbeloa on how keeping your desk clean will improve team morale, he could survive a possibly rotten candy bar.

Throughout the following week, Kroos barely came out of his bedroom. When he did leave the confinements of his room, he only made talked about the weather, didn’t ask any questions and ate just one meal a day.

Isco and James spent a lot of their time staring at his bedroom door and wondering what they should do. One time, they entered his bedroom without warning to make sure he wasn’t using a cellphone or anything else that might reveal where he was, but Kroos was just lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. They’d left him alone after that.

The instructions they’d been given when they took this job were on the lines of not letting Kroos be murdered, not on what to do in eventuality of the person they were protecting being depressed.

If Isco were a teenage rebel and not an adult officer of the law, he would have proposed they fought the system, which had clearly failed them.

Instead, they called Sergio, who was like their questionable and kind of funny-looking uncle who wears shirts with floral patterns and who you’re never quite sure about. He was also amazing at handling other people and, in any case, one of their superior officers.

The first did Sergio did when he picked up his phone was to ask, “What happened? What have you done?”

Isco frowned. They’d fucked up _one_ case.

“Nothing’s wrong,” James said, taking the phone away from Isco and putting it on speaker. “We just need your advice.”

They heard Sergio exhale in relief on the other end of the line. “Speak to me, my young dumplings. I'm all ears.”

This time both he and James frowned, but decided not to question the ridiculous nicknames. Some things were simply better off left alone.

“We think our witness might be depressed,” Isco said. They were in the kitchen, where Kroos couldn’t hear them, not that the guy looked like he cared about what they were up to.

“He’s not eating and he’s barely left his room this whole week,” James added.

“What are you guys? His babysitter?” Sergio asked. He sounded distracted, like he was playing a computer game, writing a report and making a sandwich all at the same time, which was entirely possible with him.

“We’re gonna be hanging out with this guy every day for the next six months. It’d be nice if he didn’t look like he wanted to cry the whole time,” Isco commented, crossing his arms across his chest. 

“Well look, I’m not a psychiatrist, but my expert deduction is that the guy is not handling the whole moving away from his home to hide in another country where he doesn’t know anything or anyone well,” there was the sound of a whistle going off in the background and Sergio moving somewhere. “What you need to do is distract him, show him how funny and not dumb you can be. Just talk to the guy and take him out to dinner. Say it’s your treat and pull his chair. The works.”

Isco squinted at the phone. “We’re protecting him, not dating him.”

“Potatoe, potato. Just be nice, okay? Now if you both don’t mind, I’ve got a knitting project to get back to and a panini to eat. Bye,” and with that Sergio hanged up, probably off to knit him and Iker some matching scarves.

Isco turned to James. He saw how James’ cheeks had gained a pink dust throughout the phone call with Sergio and, as always, refused to look into it. “Dinner out?” James asked.

Isco nodded. “Dinner out.”

They got dressed before they knocked on Kroos’ door and waited patiently with two big smiles on their faces. When Kroos opened the door, James and Isco took a good look at him. He was already in his pajamas and his eyes were blood-shot.

Isco pushed him back into the room.

“Get dressed, we’re going out for dinner.”

“I’m not hungry,” Kroos replied, too quickly for Isco’s liking.

“You’ve literally only eaten some shitty, store-bought lasagna all day. You’re hungry. Get dressed, some jeans and a sweater will do fine, and be ready in five minutes. If you’re not we’ll break your door!” Isco shouted with an overly cheerful tone as he left the room.

“We won’t, but we will knock persistently until you open it!” James shouted after him. “What?” he asked when Isco glared at him. “He doesn’t know you yet. He can’t tell when you’re joking.”

“Who says I’m joking? I could break down this door if I wanted to.”

James gave him a once-over. “When was the last time you hit the gym?” he smiled and talked in this calm, open to discussion tone that made Isco want to simultaneously kiss and slap him.

Instead, Isco gasped. Loudly. Before he could tell James where he could go shove his precious gym, Kroos stepped out of his room and interrupted them. “Please don’t break down my door.”

“I won’t,” Isco said, glad to at least get the final say in the discussion. “Anyway, what do you feel like? I think there’s a German restaurant nearby, isn’t there?”

“Yeah, near the precinct. We can go there, or we can try that Chinese place Marcelo keeps talking about.”

They looked to Toni, leaving the choice to him, who looked back at them like he hadn't understood a word they said. “Chinese,” he said after a while. Isco patted him on the back.

“Chinese it is!”

The walk to the restaurant nearby was quick, with Toni fitting between them.

At dinner, James and Isco tried not to bring up the subject of why Toni was in Madrid, which Toni seemed to appreciate. Instead they talked about football, food and the sights Toni needed to see.

“I don’t wanna bother either of you,” Kroos said.

Isco saw James roll his eyes. “Seriously, it’s fine. I didn’t grow up here, so I’m always up for a tour of the city, and Isco loves a good reason to spend all day eating food.”

“Hey!” Isco exclaimed. The complaint slipped out on pure instinct. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, someone had commented on his love for food. Isco knew they were all just jealous of how much he could eat while keeping his incredible physique. 

James gave him an unimpressed look. “You’re going to tell me I’m lying?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you have to put it like that,” he turned to Kroos and tried for a charming smile. “I’m a connoisseur of good food, drinks and sights. I’m actually a perfect tourist guide, now that I think about it.”

After a moment of hesitation, Kroos smiled back. “Thank you, agent Alarcón,” he said, which immediately made Isco cringe.

“Oh no, come on. I know we have a professional relationship, but you have to call me Isco,” he said. 

“And me James.”

Toni glanced at them, eyes shifting quickly from one another as if he was waiting for them to call out their joke at any moment. Isco didn’t miss the way his shoulders relaxed, slumping down, when they didn’t say anything. “Okay. Isco and James. In that case, you can call me Toni. But is it really no trouble to go to all those places? I thought I would have to stay inside most of the time.” 

James glances at Isco, who shrugged. “Technically yes, but Madrid is a city of three million and no one is supposed to even know you’re here. We stay out of everyone’s line of sight and we’re good. We can even go see Real Madrid if you’d like.”

“Are football tickets included in his living expenses, though? Because I can’t afford Real Madrid tickets,” James asked, a sheepish look on his face.

Isco stroked his beard. “Isn’t there an entertainment expenses section in the reports we can fill?”

“Yes, but you need to describe what entertainment that is.”

“What about teaching expenses? Because we’re teaching him about what Madrid life is like and all,” Isco tried.

James stared at him like he was an idiot. Isco hated that look. “We’re,” he lowered his voice, “cops, not high school teachers.”

“Well you think of something then,” Isco said. He grabbed his napkin and threw it at James’ face, making the other man laugh.

All throughout their bickering, Toni stared at them with this expression that was half amused, half confused.

When their waiter came to get their orders, Isco ordered himself a beer out of a habit and got a swift kick in the shin for it. “Sorry, my bad. I’ll actually have some apple juice.”

The waiter lifted an eyebrow at him, but didn’t comment. Isco lifted an eyebrow back at him. What? He wasn’t allowed to change his mind now? James got orange juice and Toni slowly asked for a beer, all the while staring at them as if waiting for them to tell him he couldn’t order a beer.

James was the one to clarify after the waiter left. “You’re allowed to drink if you want to. We’re the ones who can’t while we’re on duty.”

“But won’t you be on duty for the next six months? Or will I get someone else?”

“I’m afraid to tell you that you’re stuck with us until the very end,” Isco shrugged. “Don’t worry, we knew what we were signing up for when we agreed to this.”

“What do you normally do, if I’m allowed to ask,” Toni smiled. It was a timid grin, but it was better than nothing, and Isco couldn’t help but think he looked so much better like this.

“We worked mainly theft, minor robberies and auto, but our last job was a drug bust that,” Isco coughed, scratched the back of his head and looked up, “didn’t go so well.”

“What happened?” Toni asked when Isco didn’t continue.

Isco nudged James’ foot beneath the table while he took out his phone. He pretended to text someone while James told the story of their royal fuck up while he was, in fact, trying to perfect a level in Angry Birds. He was no longer angry about what had happened, but he was definitely still ashamed and embarrassed.

He took a sip of his apple juice as he sent two green pigs flying through the air.

When he was finished, James nudged Isco’s foot and Isco put his phone away. He watched Toni, who didn’t look like he suddenly no longer trusted them and figured he wasn’t that affected by their story.

“So anyway, Germany, what’s that like?” Isco asked in effort to change the subject. James gave him a _look_ , prompting him to defend himself. “I’m just trying to make conversation.”

“You are so smooth,” James replied, but he was smiling and Isco couldn’t have stopped himself from winking at him even if he tried.

His comment made Toni laugh, the second time he’d done so since he had arrived in Madrid. Isco smiled, proud of his handiwork.

Toni had a nice laugh, it wasn’t too loud but it still took over his whole face, pulling out his dimples and crinkling the skin around his eyes.

“Germany is cold and I imagine the food won’t compare to the one in Madrid, but it wasn’t so bad,” Toni said. There was a hint of longing in his voice that you couldn’t miss, but he didn’t look heartbroken so much as determined. Isco didn’t miss the past tense Toni slipped into his words either.

After their meal, James said goodbye to them and went back to his own place. Isco and Toni walked to the apartment by themselves, with Isco checking the faces of the people who passed by them and Toni with his eyes on the ground. When they got to the house, Toni went immediately to his bedroom, which meant the night was over. Isco threw himself on the couch. Tonight had been fine, great even, but he’d still hoped for something else; something more.

“Are you okay?” a voice asked, making him flip around so he could face it.

Toni stood by the hallway entrance. He seemed to be in a cross between helping Isco and fleeing. Blood began to pour in Isco’s arteries, fleeing upward towards his cheeks.

“I’m good, just resting my eyes for a bit. Wanna watch some television with me?” Isco asked. He noticed Toni was already in his pajamas, which consisted of an old grey t-shirt and flannel pants. He looked even smaller like this; easy to harm, easy to take care of.

They watched an episode of the Australian version of MasterChef, three episodes of Friends and got halfway through an action movie before Isco’s eyes gave up on him and he fell asleep. He woke up the next morning still on the couch without his shoes and a blanket thrown over him.

It wasn’t difficult to like Toni Kroos after that.

They took things slowly. Toni took to all of their plans with a lot of hesitance, clearly not comfortable walking around Madrid, but that didn’t mean they had to stay cooped up inside all the time either. They used James’ car to visit parks around the city and try different restaurants every night. They taught Toni about the wonders of Spanish television, how to cook a good paella and attempted to teach him about siestas.

“I can’t sleep in the middle of the afternoon like that. It’s not natural,” Toni said, staring Isco and James as if _they_ were the weird people and not him.

“Of course you can! You just gotta lie down and let the heat lull you to sleep.” Isco demonstrated his point by dropping off the couch to lie on the floor, sighing when he felt the cool touch of the wood against his cheek.

They were on the edge of September, about to leave the sunny days of August behind so they could reach autumn and cooler temperatures. Only, the temperature refused to actually drop because global warming was a pain in the ass bigger than Arbeloa’s lectures. Summer of 2014 in Madrid was officially in the history records for the longest heat wave recorded in Spain. Isco was pretty sure he was dying, his brain was melting and spontaneous combustion couldn’t come soon enough.

He picked up a glass of water from the coffee table above him and dumped it on his head. 

It didn’t help and Isco was too tired to put the glass where it’d come from afterwards, so Toni was the one to carefully pick it from his hands.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Isco, we’re adults. We have beds. We are adults with beds where you can sleep on,” James told him. He was as terrible at handling the heat as Isco and thus his speech was all sluggish and sounded mostly like gibberish.

Earlier in the day, they had turned off the air conditioning to demonstrate to Toni how the heat would help him appreciate a good siesta. What had sounded like a tremendous idea at the time had turned into a horror movie when the stupid thing went and stopped working for good. They’d called the landlord about it, but of course he said he couldn’t do anything about it until the next weekend.

So far, all their brilliant plan had produced was them working themselves up to a sweat and eating a whole ice cream container and Toni thinking they were idiots. Isco was sure, however, that they would still get Toni to see the light of reason as soon as he took the stick against siestas off his ass.

“The bed is yours today,” Isco rolled his head so his other cheek could get some respite.

“Why are you so against bed sharing? I wash my sheets, man. I’m not like Benzema,” James said, making Isco cackle.

“Who’s Benzema?” Toni asked.

As the days had passed by, he’d gotten more comfortable around them. He now asked questions, talked freely and wasn’t afraid to call them out on their bad jokes. Isco felt a mix between parental pride and overwhelming fondness whenever he saw Toni crack a bad joke on his own.

“Detective at the precinct. He’s actually a really cool guy, but he’s got this vibe to him,” Isco said. He rolled around so he could see Toni half-sat, half-laid on the couch and James sat next to him.

“This ‘I’ve got a mould city growing in my dirty kitchen sink’ vibe,” James finished. Isco nodded solemnly, but then he actually thought about that statement and remembered what his own apartment had looked when he moved to Madrid.

“I think that happened to me once,” he said, which earned him a kick to the face from James’ smelly foot.

“That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. There’s no way we’re sharing a bed now.”

“There’s still space in mine if you prefer it over the floor,” Toni said and that— That was just inappropriate, from both of them, but especially Toni, who was shy and reserved a month ago and now made jokes about sharing beds as if Isco wasn’t suffering enough from the heat already.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Isco said in his best bitchy voice. He rolled around again so that they couldn’t see him blush, the situation too ridiculous for him to handle.

The problem wasn’t that he was interested. Isco had eyes and an active libido, so of course he hadn’t failed to notice how attractive his partner was when they first got assigned together, nor had he failed to notice how Toni looked when he was relaxed and smiling at them. He’d noticed and he was interested, but he was also an officer of the law who did his job right and could keep it in his pants, so that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the way James, and now Toni, talked about it all so casually. It wasn’t normal to purpose sharing a bed with your friends unless you were either drunk, interested or joking around. Isco knew the first option wasn’t possible at the time, so he was left wondering if they were serious or if this was all wishful thinking from his idiotic brain who didn’t understand the concept of ‘off-limits’.

It only made it worse that he didn’t allow himself to think about what their jokes meant. Doing so was making all the questions he had begin to pile on, but still he couldn’t do anything. He _knew_ that the second he started thinking again about kissing James and sharing a bed with Toni he would not stop and that—

That was a big problem.

“I need some air,” Isco got up in one swift movement, picking up his keys from the coffee table and heading out the door before either of them could say anything.

He only managed five minutes outside in the shade before he gave up and headed back into the apartment. He was blowing things out of proportion again. Seeing what wasn’t there, picking up on what had to be just jokes.

He blamed it on the heat. He could never think properly when the weather was like this.

When he slipped back into the apartment, James and Toni both glanced up to see him enter. Isco waited for them to ask what he’d been up to—he needed some fresh air away from the suffocating staleness of the apartment—but neither did.

Isco wasn’t sure whether he was grateful or not for their silence.

James’ was zapping through the channels on television, apparently having given up on the ‘teach Toni about naps’ idea, when Toni said, “I love that movie. Me and my brother used to watch it all the time.”

Isco’s interest peeked. Toni’s file didn’t have much on his family, other than the fact that they weren’t of their concern. Toni hadn’t spoken about them either since he’d arrived in Madrid and Isco and James hadn’t asked.

“Is your brother still in Germany?” James asked.

“No, he’s been living in America since dad died last year. I kind of lost contact with him when it happened and now with everything else,” Toni barked out a laugh. “Now I don’t even know.” Toni shook his head, one of his hands grabbing the fabric of his shorts before he released it.

Isco scooted closer to him on the couch while James went into the kitchen and got another ice cream container. Smart man.

“You alright?” Isco asked, fully aware of the redundancy of the question seeing Toni had gone from fine to on the edge of tears in five seconds, but needing to say something anyway.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just— I never wanted the job at BayernM, you know? But when dad died I knew would have been disappointed if no one did anything. Mom had been living in France for years when it happened and my brother couldn’t have cared less for it, so I had to take his seat on the board. That’s how Bayern works. They keep a close circle on everyone. Try to keep it in the family.”

“Does your family know what happened?” James asked.

Toni shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t really get the chance to talk to them between quitting my job and being taken into protection. The BKA said they have people looking after them, so I imagine they know something. In any case, they should be safe. Neither of them are connected to BayernM and there’s no reason to go after them.”

Isco frowned. He wasn’t so sure about that. If BayernM were as nasty as they seemed to be, then they were more than capable of going after Toni’s family to get to him. Nevertheless, he didn’t say this out loud. Toni was no idiot. The same thought had probably crossed his mind a thousand times already.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” James said. He was clearly thinking the same as Isco. It was amazing how three different minds could all think the same with the right push.

“Yes, they are,” Toni stared straight ahead, his shoulders set in a rigid line, his whole body tense. He was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince them.

Isco put an arm around Toni’s shoulders and squeezed the upper part of his arm.

“So!” Isco clapped his hands together, bringing the attention to him. He grinned. “Real Madrid! When are we going to see one of their games?”

They’d been warming him up to the idea for a couple of days now, and now seemed like a good a time as any to bring it up again. Toni still didn’t look all too convinced. He kept running his thumbs over one another and if he gnawed on his bottom lip for any longer, blood would soon burst. He was used to going out to small, private establishments, nothing like a big game, so Isco understood where he was coming from. 

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” James said, never one to miss people’s discomfort and always quick to act.

Isco repeated the feeling. “We’re here to protect you.”

“Alright,” Toni said after a couple of seconds of thinking. “You’re right. What’s the worse that can happen? Other than Real Madrid losing, that is.”

James gasped while Isco put a hand on his chest. “Don’t tempt fate.”

“I won’t,” Toni grinned.

They agreed to go watch the match against Atlético. All they needed was to get Iker’s approval and sell a kidney to pay for the tickets and they would be good to go.


	3. Santiago Bernabéu

“You can’t go.”

“Iker—“

“A ‘no’ is a ‘no’, officer Alarcón, no matter how much you try to bargain,” Iker said.

So they were back to formalities now. Isco leaned against his seat and tapped his foot on the ground. At least he wasn’t like James, who’d be pouting and looking all miserable and mopey by now. Instead, he glared at his commanding officer. A lot.

“And you can stop looking at me like I’m your mother after catching you with your hands in the cookie jar,” Iker added.

Isco attempted to shift his glare into a neutral expression, despite knowing the effort would prove useless. He had always been too openly aggressive instead of passive-aggressive like the rest of humanity for his own good.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Sergio. He’s the one who says stuff like that,” Isco said. Iker stopped signing his paperwork to look up and give him an unimpressed look. “You’re the one who’s always talking about how he’s a bad influence.”

Iker leaned back in his seat to match Isco’s stance.

“What’s this about then? I know you have a tendency to act without thinking, but you’re usually pretty good at following my rules,” said Iker.

Isco thought about how much trouble he could get in if he admitted the truth and decided to go go for it anyway, consequences be damned. He was already at the deep end of the pool, might as well dive and search for the coins at the bottom.

“We promised him,” he explained. He waved a hand in the air to declare he had nothing else to say, then pulled it back and ran it through his hair.

Iker’s unimpressed look levelled up and evolved into a new form: disgusted.

“You promised him? That’s why you’re disrespecting my orders? Because you promised a man under your protection, who you’ve known for two months, that you’d take him to a Real Madrid game and now you don’t want to go back on your word?”

Isco shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“Have you considered, Officer Alarcón, that maybe you shouldn’t have promised something you couldn’t guarantee?”

“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s been two months and nothing has happened, not to mention it’s just a football game. No one will even know we’re there,” Isco said, sitting up on his seat.

Iker shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to expose him like this. We don’t know who might be looking for him and there’s no point in risking his safety like this for a football game, even if it’s Real Madrid.”

What Iker said was, indeed, correct and valid, but Isco was never quick to give up on something he wanted, and he very much wanted this.

“What if we get box tickets?” he asked. “That way we’re away from all the people and from the confusion. We’d be able to exit the building in seconds if something were to happen.”

“You can’t afford box tickets, and you can’t include them in your expenses report either,” Iker squinted at him. Like any good detective, he was trying to find the angle Isco was working.

Little did he know, Isco was playing the best angle there was: the simple truth.

“That’s for me and James to worry about.”

Iker continued to stare at him as if trying to unravel him. Isco had to fight the urge to squirm under his captain’s gaze. He had no idea how Sergio put up with it all the time. Iker’s staring, focused solemnly on you, was physically nerve-wracking, like a hand scratching the inside of your skull.

“Box tickets only. You don’t talk to anyone, you don’t stand out and he wears a cap and sunglasses the whole time,” Iker ordered. Isco jumped from his chair with a huge grin and gave his hand for Iker to shake.

“Deal,” he said, storming out of the office before Iker got the chance to rethink what he had agreed to. Iker was not the type to go back on his word, but one could never be too sure and Isco was not about to ruin this for them.

He bought a chocolate cake on his way to Toni’s apartment, which he now tended to think of as their apartment rather than anything else. More often than not, he and James both spent their nights and days there. The couch was more comfortable than the beds they had at home and it was more practical to stay than to commute back and forth every day. 

With a mental flick of his hand, Isco dismissed the fact that even if the couch was made of pine needles and commuting only took a minute, he would still prefer to sleep at Toni’s than go home.

“I bought cake!” Isco shouted as soon as he opened the door. Despite popular belief, he had such a thing as real priorities in his life and cake was pretty high up on the list.

“Celebratory cake or consolation cake?” asked James.

He and Toni were sat on the floor playing Fifa in their pajamas because living up the fourteen-year-old boy lifestyle was apparently cool again. Not that Isco had room to judge. Just last week, he’d insisted they did a Lord of The Rings marathon on the date of JRR Tolkien’s death.

“Both?” Isco put the cake on the coffee table and lied down on the couch “Yeah, probably both.”

James paused the game so he could turn around and stare at Isco.

“Please be more cryptic,” he said, making Isco roll his eyes.

“We can go, but only if we get box seats,” Isco sat up and opened the box with the cake to avoid looking at James’ eyes.

“We can’t afford those,” James whined, as Isco predicted he would.

“I know, but I have a plan,” he waited until their attention was focused on him. “Two words: male stripping.”

A pillow was thrown at him. Isco couldn’t tell if it was James or Toni, too busy not choking on cake as he laughed to notice.

“We are _not_ becoming strippers. My mom would kill me, Toni would blush the whole time and die of embarrassment and you’re too hairy,” James replied. Isco’s attempts not to choke on cake came to end and he had to be brought to life by Toni patting him firmly on the back.

“You said that way too quickly,” Isco said through watery eyes and a cracked voice. “Also, I’ll have you know some people like hairy men.”

James grabbed a piece of cake for himself and ate it as casual as can be. “We’re not becoming strippers.”

Isco fell back into the couch and nudged Toni until he sat on the other side and Isco could throw his legs over his lap. “All right, well, my second idea was starving until we saved enough money,”he said. Toni pinched his ankle, making Isco wriggle. “Fine. You suggest something then.”

“I’ll pay for the tickets. We’re going to see the game because of me, so it’s only fair,” Toni said, grabbing Isco’s legs and holding them tight when the man tried to kick him in the stomach.

“Those tickets cost five hundred euros. How exactly do you plan to pay for them?” Isco asked. Toni rolled his eyes at Isco’s tone.

“I emptied one of my bank accounts when I left Germany. I can afford the tickets if you pass me a slice of cake and stop trying to kick me.”

Isco stretched as far as he could to grab a slice from the box, nearly falling on top of James in the process.

“Are you sure?” James asked, always quicker to voice his apprehension. “We can find another way.”

Neither of them mentioned the fact that Toni had hidden something from them all this time. Toni was a careful person and Isco expected nothing less from him. The fact that he was telling them about this now only showed how much he trusted them.

Isco got him the biggest slice of cake in the box.

“I’m sure. I was saving the money for an emergency, but this works too,” he said, then took a large bite of his cake and resumed their Fifa game. The next day, they bought the tickets at the stadium and grabbed all of their Real Madrid gear from their respective apartments so they’d be ready for the game. After that, they began to count down the seconds until they’d be at the Bernabéu, with the best seats in the house, watching a repeat of the Champions League final.

* * *

Murder, Isco had always known, was a coward’s act.

Right now, however, with Real Madrid tied one to one at home against Atlético fucking de Madrid, it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.

Isco paced from side to side behind their chairs, one arm crossed over his chest and the other propped on it so that he could bite his nails. James sat next to Toni, his arms crossed and a typical pout on his face while Toni had his hands in his pockets and looked goddamn heartbroken.

Murder. Murder was the only answer.

“It’s not that bad. We can still come around,” James said. Isco continued his pacing.

“We’re getting our asses handed to us. We’re being _humiliated_ at home against Atlético. Unless we get our shit together at halftime and come back with real strength, we are fucked.”

“We can do it. We won La Décima, we can win this too,” Toni said.

Isco grunted in agreement, even though he didn’t have the same hope as Toni. Atlético was playing their usual game, which was dirty, mean and full of bullshit. They could still win this, but to do so they’d have to turn everything around and stop Atlético from stomping on them.

For the first time since they’d started watching over Toni, Isco wished he could get soaring drunk. It wouldn’t make handling Atlético de Madrid’s usual crap a holiday, but it’d certainly help. 

“Cheaters,” Isco muttered.

“Hear, hear!” James replied while Toni nodded in agreement. At least Isco was watching the game with the right people.

He settled for throwing himself down on his chair and aggressively eating a bag of chips. When he saw Toni stare at him, he offered him the bag and they ate the rest together. As he watched another Atlético player throw himself on the ground as if they’d just been shot instead of lightly tapped on the back, Isco contemplated what they’d do to make it up to Toni for buying the tickets for this piss game. His brain suggested a couple of ideas not appropriate for work and Isco decided he’d later ask James what he had in mind.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Toni said at halftime. James went with him because he needed to go as well and Isco went so he could stretch his legs and imagine himself punching all the Atlético fans they passed by.

They were getting out of their seats when Toni froze. Out the corner of his eye, Isco saw Toni’s mouth drop open and his eyes widening.

“What—“ he started to ask, cut off by Toni.

“I think there’s someone in the crowd from Bayern,” Toni’s voice was a blank sheet with no emotion written in the lines.

Immediately, Isco ran to the large window that separated them from the crowd, where he saw a man with an ugly scar staring right at them. When he turned back, James was pulling Toni away from view.

“Shit,” Isco swore. He reached for a gun that wasn’t there and swore again. Then he grabbed Toni and ran.

“Wait, wait—“ Toni grabbed Isco’s hand and stuck his ground. “I’m not sure if it’s him. It might not be.”

“We’re not taking any chances,” Isco hissed, shaking his head. 

They’d been so stupid coming here and thinking Toni would be safe. Thinking that because two months had passed, Toni was suddenly no longer wanted by one of the world’s most powerful and dangerous companies.

Isco pulled Toni to the nearest staircase while James called Iker and informed him of their situation. They would get Toni out of there no matter what. They were not fucking up. Not again and not on this case. 

“Do you know the name of who it was?” James asked.

“Ribery. I think he works in marketing.” Isco glanced at Toni. The man he saw did not look like someone from marketing. “I don’t know,” Toni added, sensing Isco’s disbelief. He was beginning to panic. His breath came in short, choked puffs of air and he was two shades redder than usual.

“Don’t worry. Everything’s fine,” Isco said, giving Toni’s hand a squeeze.

They were at the parking lot in front of the stadium in less than five minutes. Before they got in, Isco kneeled and checked the underside of James’ car. The sight made Toni let out this hysterical, terrified laugh. James wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

Isco knew where he was coming from. It wasn’t every day that someone kneeled beneath your car to check for a bomb, but they had to be sure. No one was supposed to know they were attending the game.

“Talked to Iker. He says a couple of people at BayernM are currently traveling through Europe for work and that he didn’t know if they had plans to stop in Madrid.”

“So is this just a coincidence or what?” Isco asked. This sure as hell didn’t look like a coincidence to him. That Ribery guy had seen them, crystal clear. He’d known exactly where their seats were.

“Marcelo and Cris are looking into it. In the meantime, let’s go somewhere else. The house might not be safe.”

James got in the driver’s seat—it was never a good idea to put Isco there while he was angry—giving Isco the opportunity to turn around and check up on Toni.

“Still breathing?” he asked, trying to lighten up the air.

Toni let out a shaky laugh. He looked paler than usual and his chest moved too quickly for Isco’s liking. His fists were clenched so hard that he had to be hurting himself. Isco reached out until he could hold one of Toni’s hands again.

“Still breathing,” Toni confirmed.

“Good.” Isco stroked the back of his hand and didn’t let go until looking backward made him feel car sick.

They didn’t talk for the rest of the drive. Isco because he was born a paranoid bastard and he feared the car might be bugged. James and Toni maybe for similar reasons, maybe because they didn’t feel like it. Either option was understandable.

They drove out of the city until they reached quieter streets. They parked the car near a mall, then took a ten-minute walk to a cheap hotel nearby where they could spend the night.

The one to go to the receptionist was James while Toni and Isco huddled together by the elevator. Isco saw him talk to the receptionist and pay in cash. He scuffed Toni’s shoe as they waited. It was a simple gesture, meaningless really, but it was what he had. Isco wasn’t good at expressing his thoughts with words. He could only give Toni a small reminder that he was there and hope it was enough.

James got them two rooms, one with a single bed, and another with two, but when they reached their floor they all went to the room with the two beds. The idea of going in separate directions wasn’t even mentioned.

“Is Ribery a Real Madrid fan?” Isco asked. They were watching replays of the game while eating dinner service. He and James were taking up the space near the headboard while Toni lounged near the end of the beds.

“Not that I know of,” Toni dropped a piece of chicken in his mouth, then carefully lowered his plate to the floor.

On screen, the presenter was discussing Atlético’s second goal and showing replays of the scene. Isco didn’t even have it in him to be angry.

“What about Atlético?” James asked.

Toni shook his head, running a hand through his hair. “Doubt it. Do you really think it could be a coincidence? I mean, he saw me. He knew where I was.”

Isco didn’t want to tell him ‘no’ because that wasn’t what you told people who had, essentially, ran for their lives for the second time in two months. However, the idea of running into Ribery being a weird chance of fate didn’t sit well with him either, and he knew Toni wouldn’t appreciate being lied to, no matter how well-intentioned the lie was.

“We’ll know when Marcelo calls,” James said. Isco nodded. It was the best answer they had.

They slept in their boxers, for once the heat wave proving useful.

Isco didn’t know how it happened, if they moved subconsciously or the other two knew what they were doing, but somehow they arranged themselves so that Toni slept in the middle of the bed, with Isco and James flanking his sides. Isco spent ten minutes trying to figure out if sleeping with his back to them would be rude until he gave up, receded into the darkest corners of his mind and sprawled on the bed like an octopus.

“Seriously?” someone asked. Most likely Toni, but possibly James. Octopus Isco had no concept of personal space.

“I’m making sure you stay warm during the night,” Isco said. He hid his face in his pillow to block out the lights from outside their window, the curtains not long enough to shield them.

“You’re using me as a pillow,” Toni replied. Isco patted his bicep, which was quite firm for someone whose workout consisted of the occasional jog through Parque Del Retiro with James while Isco slept until noon. 

“You love it,” he replied, mentally winking at him.

Isco waited for Toni to fire off another jab, but it never came. Instead, he allowed Isco to throw an arm and a leg around him and even put his own arm around Isco’s torso. One of James’ hands rested on top of Isco’s.

In the privacy of his own head, Isco wondered if there was such a thing as platonic cuddling or if he might as well cut his losses and admit, to himself and himself only, that their relationship had crossed the line and moved past platonic. 

No one brought up the existence of the other room and the keycard abandoned on the window still.

And the thing was, there was no way that James and Toni hadn’t noticed this. It was impossible for them not to notice this. How close they were, unnecessarily, as if they couldn’t have space between them. How frightened they had been at the possibility of Toni being in real danger. How all of this had to mean something. They weren’t dumb. They had to be seeing the same things Isco was and they were both ignoring them.

Isco fell asleep with his thoughts prickling him. He woke up with James’ head on his chest—how could one man move around so much in his sleep?—and no answers.

At around ten, Cristiano called.

“I’ve got news.” Despite moving straight to business, he still spoke in a calm tone devoid of any anxiety. “BayernM didn’t plan to visit Madrid, but changed their trip at the last minute to fit in a day in the city and watch the derby. According to their flight schedule, they should be out of the country by lunchtime.”

“Thank you,” James said. “Is there anything else?”

“Not much. We’ll keep an eye on them, let you know when it’s safe to go back to your apartment. Iker is suspicious, but he’s always suspicious so that’s not saying much. General consensus is that this was all just one badly timed coincidence,” there was a pause marked by a hint of hesitation. “We don’t know if this has affected your situation. We contacted the BKA, but they’ve yet to reply.”

“Alright. Thanks again, Cris.”

“No problem, just be safe.” With that, the line went dead and they were all left staring at each other.

Toni was the first to break the awkward silence. “I’m going to get dressed,” he picked up his clothes and went to the bathroom, leaving James and Isco alone.

“Did we fuck up again?” Isco asked as he fell back on the bed, stretching his arms above his head before hiding his face behind his palms. 

James lied down beside him. “It wasn’t our fault,” he didn’t answer Isco’s question, which in itself was enough of an answer.

“BKA is gonna wanna move him out of Madrid. Probably out of Spain, too,” Isco had been trying not to think about it, but it was the only logical course of action. If they’d really seen Toni, something Toni was sure of, then it was too dangerous for him to remain in the city.

“I’m going to miss him,” James said.

Isco thought the statement should make him jealous. It would have, months ago, when a fire set in his stomach whenever he saw James speak about anyone like that. Toni and James were close, and unlike him, they didn’t live in a constant state of denial. Only, he couldn’t be jealous, not when as he said those words, James rolled to his side and fit a leg between Isco’s.

Not when he would miss Toni just as much. 

“Being a cop is hard,” was his reply. His job didn’t allow him to be childish and selfish often, but today, hidden in a tiny hotel away from Madrid, with James so close and Toni about to leave, he figured he had the right to be as petulant as he wished. He hid his face against the sheets, ignoring the fact that they didn’t look all that clean.

“Are you two moping?” Toni asked after he got out of the bathroom and saw the scene in front of him. Isco flipped him off.

“We’re professional agents of the law, Kroos. People like us don’t mope. We just sit very quietly and shed a couple of silent, brave tears,” Isco said.

“Also we’re gonna miss you a lot if you go, which we hope you won’t,” James added. It was ridiculous how in check with his feelings he was. It had to be from all the yoga he did with Cris and a few others from the precinct. The yoga had changed them.

“That, too,” Isco said since the cat was already out of the bag and it wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with admitting he’d miss Toni. 

“Could I ask to stay? I mean, it’s not as if they know anything about my situation,” he lied down on the bed next to Isco, who promptly slung a leg over him. 

If the others had no concerns about how physical they were, why should he?

“Maybe. We’ll see when Iker calls,” he said. 

They went out for breakfast and coffee eventually, returning to the city after lunch and Iker’s call.

“You’re to be more careful and move apartments just in case,” Iker said. 

“Okay,” Isco replied.

“And you’re not allowed to go to any more games.”

“All right,” Isco waited for Iker to continue until the silence grew awkward. “Is that it? No yelling about us not being careful enough? No German Police on our ass for endangering the safety of one of their witnesses?”

Even though he couldn’t see him, Isco could somehow still feel Iker rolling his eyes over the line. “What happened was an unfortunate coincidence that could have easily happened anywhere else. It wasn’t your fault. Also, we bought a plane ticket to Barcelona and put it under Mr. Kroos’ name. He’s not gonna use it, but we’ll make sure BayernM doesn’t know that.”

“Oh,” Isco said, stumped for a second before he found his footing again. “Thank you, Captain.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll talk to you later,” and just like that, Toni was staying and they were on the hunt for a new apartment.

The new place they got was a three bedroom. There was no point pretending they didn’t already spend all their time together. Nor was there a point pretending he and James felt comfortable enough to go home while Toni’s life was in danger. Isco couldn’t speak for James, but he felt uneasy whenever Toni so much as left his line of sight. Going back to his one-bedroom hole in the wall was impossible.

Toni seemed fine with it. He didn’t look too shaken up anymore. Iker and Cristiano’s reassurances had been enough to put him at ease, although neither James nor Isco missed how he spent more time than necessary going over the ‘International’ section of El País. 

“He’s still worried,” James whispered. Toni was in the living room and they were in the kitchen putting some frozen pizza in the oven.

“Wouldn’t you be, too, if you were in his position?” 

James leaned back against the counter and laid a hand on Isco’s arm. “You know what I mean,” he said. Isco pulled James’ hand back and squeezed it.

“He’ll be fine. We just need to distract him and keep him safe and everything will be all right.”

And it was. They kept an even lower-profile than they did before. They went over the names and faces of most of BayernM’s associates and made sure they had them all memorized. They never visited the same place twice and they checked and double checked the perimeter was safe before going anywhere. They bought new games for their PS4 and continued to fail at teaching Toni about siestas.

“They’re great!” Isco threw his arms in the air, frustrated once again at how stubborn Toni could be.

The irony of said thought was not lost on him.

“I’m not saying they’re not great, I’m just saying they’re not for me,” Toni replied. He was lying on the couch while Isco took the floor and James the armchair, as per usual.

“I feel like I failed as a parent. I never expected you to be the black sheep of this family, Toni. I always thought it’d be Isco.”

Isco lifted his head to frown at James. “I resent that statement,” he said. He almost added that there was an incestuous undertone to James’ comment, only to catch himself at the last second.

The past two months had done nothing to aid his confusion. All they’d accomplished was to make him get even closer to Toni and James without actually moving anywhere. They’d gotten to the point where Isco ran out of the room every day or so to just breathe.

Breathe and look at his life choices. He had a crush on his work partner—which, alright, admittedly had been there for months—and the guy he was ordered to protect.

Breathe and look at the mess he’d created.

It was a complicated thing, trying to own up to one’s feelings and realizing those same feelings were real, terrifying and unacceptable.

So far, all he’d accomplished was a headache and a whole new level of paranoia he didn’t even know was possible.

When one of Toni’s arms reached down to pat Isco on the head, Isco didn’t flinch, but he came close.

The only comfort was knowing that, other than that, everything was fine, which was why he was surprised when they got a call from Iker one Tuesday morning asking to see them all at the precinct.

“Even Toni?” James asked.

“If he wants to come, sure. It might make things easier,” Iker said. Toni raised his eyebrows at the phone. He’d never been invited to the precinct before. The idea always seemed too dangerous.

But now Iker was telling them to go, so they went, with their guns in their holsters and Toni between them so they could shield him if needed.

When they got to the precinct, Sergio came over to shake Toni’s hand. Isco expected him to make some kind of comment about hearing a lot about Toni followed by an obvious wink, but all he did was wish them good luck.

“What was that about?” Isco asked James, who shook his head at him.

“No clue, but I don’t like it.”

They were ushered to Iker’s office the second Sergio left. James and Toni took the chairs in front of Iker’s desk while Isco chose to remain standing up. He had a thing for staying in constant movement when he was nervous, and if he sat down he would be spending the whole time moving his leg.

“I have…” Iker paused as if in search for words. He had his palms lined up, the tip of his fingers connecting to make a pyramid shape, “news. Whether they’re bad or good depends on your perspective.”

Isco froze. He put a hand on the back of James’ chair and another on the back of Toni’s. “What kind of news?”

Iker stared at them for a couple of seconds until he found—or gave up trying to find—what he wanted. He sighed.

“The Germans have decided not to go to court against BayernM. Apparently, there’s not enough evidence to make a solid case and they don’t want to risk it. They were hoping all this time to connect BayernM to Lukas Podolski’s murder and then to use Mr. Kroos’ testimonial as the cherry on top of the cake, but it seems they’ve failed to do the former, which turns the latter useless. Mr. Kroos is, from here on out, no longer in your protective custody. In regards to what he should do next,” Iker got a file out of one of the top drawers of his desk, “the BKA has a job offer in America. There’s a number in there. Call it if you wish to take them up on said offer, although you’re more than free to refuse if you want.”

Isco only managed to process about half of what came out of Iker’s mouth. 

“I— what?” Toni looked comically betrayed, wide eyes and hanging mouth. One of his hands was curled so tight around the fabric of his jeans that it was going to leave a mark.

“The case is over, Mr. Kroos,” Iker said, in the reassuring tones he always used on victims. This seemed to be the cold water bucket Toni needed to spring into action.

“They can’t do that. They can’t just give up like that. BayernM _murdered_ Lukas,” Toni said, his voice rising with every word.

“And no one can prove it or any of their other crimes. All they have is insubstantial evidence that can’t be used in court.”

“But they have to—“

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kroos, they don’t have to do anything,” Iker said. He looked genuinely sorry.

Toni slumped in his seat. James put a hand on Toni’s shoulder at the same time as Isco scratched the back of Toni’s neck.

They should leave. Find out what was in Iker’s file and make a plan of action. Toni probably didn’t want to go back to Germany, but his brother was in America, so chances of him going there to be with him again were high. He would live a new life away from all the danger. Away from them.

It would be good for him.

“What if there was something else?” Toni asked, making everyone sit up in their seats. Isco stared at him. “What if a pen drive with evidence that links BayernM to numerous money laundering, drug and weapons schemes was suddenly found in your possession? Could they go to court then?”

Isco looked up. Iker was staring at Toni with the kind of intensity that could start forest fires and burn the whole world alive.

“Isco, can you make sure the door is locked, please.”

Isco didn’t feel his feet move, but they must have because all of a sudden he found himself by the door locking it.

“Do you understand what would happen if that pen drive were to be admitted as evidence? I’ll protect your identity as much as I can, but there’s no telling whether BayernM will be able to put the pieces together.”

“I understand,” Toni looked sure of himself, but Iker didn’t seem convinced.

“Mr. Kroos, you’re currently free to go home or anywhere else you’d like. You can start a new life, as far away from here as possible. You won’t have a reason to worry about your safety anymore.”

“And I’m sure you believe in that, Captain, just as I’m sure Lukas Podolski believed in a similar thing after he resigned and moved to London,” Toni said as he shook his head. “They have to go to court or none of this will ever be put to rest.”

He looked so determined, so sure of what he was doing. Isco had never wanted to take anyone by the shoulders and shake some sense into them as much as he wanted to do it now to him. Toni was setting himself up for so much more danger by doing this.

Isco longed to say something. Glancing at James, he knew they were both biting the inside of their cheeks to avoid blurting out any complaints. It wasn’t their place, after all, to determine how this case should go.

“Well, then I have nothing else to say. You’re a brave man, Mr. Kroos, and we appreciate all your sacrifices and help.”

Toni got up, shook Iker’s hand and then turned around, taking James and Isco with him.

“Are you sure about this?” James asked when they were in the car on the way home. Isco was still too dumbfounded and annoyed for words.

“Not in the slightest bit, but I meant what I said back there. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be safe even if this whole thing blows over and at the very least, it will bring some justice to the table.”

James said something in agreement and while Isco ran a hand through his hair and didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes.

“I can’t decide whether I’m proud of you or think you’re an idiot,” he admitted in the end.

Toni kicked the back of his seat. “Pride seems like the best option, thanks,” he said, making them all laugh.

The next day, James delivered the pen to an unidentified post box where Iker could pick it up later. After three days, the pen was in German hands.

“We should go out for dinner,” James suggested the night after they got confirmation that BayernM was back on trial. Isco and Toni, who were in their pajamas trying to kick each other’s asses in Grand Theft Auto Five, gave him an unimpressed look. “After this, security’s going to be much tighter than before. We should enjoy this last day of freedom.” Isco and Toni continued to stare at him. “Also we’re out of real food and I’m tired of eating frozen pizza.”

“Honesty is key, James. Honesty is key,” Isco patted his knee, leaving his hand there and using James’ body as a lever as he pulled himself up. “Dibs on the shower.”

“Go, you pig,” James said since he was an asshole, and Toni laughed since he was an asshole as well.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” Isco singsonged as he walked to the only bathroom in their apartment.

They went to a German restaurant for dinner to try _eintopf_ and _sauerbraten_ and a bunch of other dishes with names Isco couldn’t even pronounce. Toni had to pick all their food for them since there was no Spanish version of the menu and the only vocabulary they’d picked up from hanging around Toni were curse words.

“I’m trusting you, Kroos,” James said while giving Toni his best cross-me-and-you’re-dead look.

Toni laughed. “You’ll like it. I promise.”

“But on the off chance that he hates it and kills you, can I have your copy of GTA Five?” Isco asked, dodging the breadsticks James threw at him by a millimeter. “I’m too fast for you, slow-cakes.”

“That was pure luck and you know it,” James said, poking him beneath his ribs where the motherfucker knew Isco was sensitive. Isco squeaked.

After getting a nasty look from one of the waiters, commotion at dinner fell by a considerable amounts. Isco spent a lot of time glancing from Toni to James, both sat in front of him, and wishing he could preserve this moment in time, as stupid and pathetic as that might sound. Dinners like this would soon end for them, and not long now, Toni would leave and they’d be lucky if they ever saw him again and Isco… Well, he could admit that he’d miss Toni, as a friend and more than that. He’d always have James, but it wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about James not being enough, which had never been the case.

He liked James to scary and stupid amounts. His best friend read him like no other, didn’t judge him for sometimes being too quiet and others being too loud, and was hands down one of the best human beings on planet Earth.

He liked Toni too, though. Liked the way he always kept a straight face when making a joke, how he was a horrible cook but could always create something edible out of three ingredients, and how he was only quiet until he felt comfortable around you and you realized he was actually incredibly confident and self-assured.

Isco liked James and he liked Toni. Things were complicated, to say the least.

There was a chance everything would be easier when Toni left, but deep down Isco knew that wasn’t true. Nothing worth it was ever easy. 

“Hello? Earth to Isco here, calling Mr.  García Lorca’s biggest fan .”

It was the insult that brought Isco back to the present. “Really?” he asked. “That’s the last time I’m ever sharing a secret with you.”

“What’s happening now?” Toni asked, glancing from Isco to James.

“Nothing,” Isco said, just as James said, “Isco was a theatre nerd in high school.”

“I was not! I did one play!”

“You know I have your mom’s number, right?” James said, lifting an eyebrow at Isco, who, in turn, could only frown in horror.

“I can’t believe that woman,” Isco murmured, dumping his head on the table with a loud ‘thump’. Somebody patted him on the back of the head and Isco batted their hand away without conviction. “You’re all traitors.”

“Oh, as if you don’t have enough dirt on me to write my biography. I’m just leveling the tables and bringing Toni up to speed on your past,” James said. 

He was about to launch into a rant when Toni said, “Guys, there’s someone from BayernM at the door.”

Isco’s head shot up. What were the odds of this happening to them _again_? He went against the instinct to turn around and started to pull his jacket on.

“Jesus Christ, we really have no luck,” Isco grumbled. He lifted his hand to ask for the check. They had get the hell out of there before whoever was at the door noticed them. Then he saw the look on Toni’s face. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“That’s Lewandowski,” Toni whispered. Like last time, his voice had lost much of its emotion, sounding blank and nondescript, although this time something that sounded very much like fear remained. “That’s the guy”

“What guy?” James asked. Isco got his wallet out and put some bills on the table. That should cover them.

Toni swallowed. “The man that went to London. The one who killed Lukas. That’s him.” 

Isco couldn’t resist the urge to turn around any longer. He shifted just enough to glimpse at the door out the corner of his eye and there he saw him.

His brain filled his conscious with information immediately. Robert Lewandowski. Had jet black hair, light blue eyes and a meter and eighty-four centimeters of height. Worked in Innovative Strategies, didn’t have a degree and was born in Poland, all of which completely useless facts that didn’t explain the only thing Isco wanted to know: _why the hell was he here?_

The answer became evident in seconds, when, after a quick glance at the restaurant, Lewandowski started walking towards them.

“Hello, Toni. I’ve been looking for you,” the man grinned, reaching out his hand for Toni to shake. “You’re a hard man to find.”


	4. Buendía

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a while, but chapter four is finally here, thank the heavens. The next chapter shouldn't, hopefully, take as long as this one did. Cheeeeeers!

Isco was out of his seat before he was aware of doing so. His blood ran cold as he put himself between Lewandowski and Toni, who had yet to shake Lewandowski’s hand.

“These must be your guard dogs. How quaint,” said Lewandowski with such an obnoxious grin that Isco had to resist the urge to punch him. He spoke in English with a thick polish accent, but his words were still easy to understand.

“And you are?” Isco asked, giving James the time to pull Toni up and to get them ready to leave.

“Robert Lewandowski. I work for BayernM,” he said, moving his open hand towards Isco, who glanced at it as if it was covered in poison. Isco didn’t shake his hand.

“You don’t say,” Isco smiled stiffly, feeling the corners of his mouth drag his skin upwards like two meat spikes.

“I’ve been looking for Toni for a while now. He has some unfinished business with our company,” Lewandowski said, turning to Toni and grinning at him again.

Isco took out his wallet and threw two bills on the table.

“You’ll have to talk to him some other day then. We’re about to leave.”

“Nonsense, your food hasn’t even arrived yet. We’ll talk now,” Lewandowski’s voice didn’t leave a lot of space for safe exits. He reached for Toni’s arm, grabbing it and pulling Toni closer to him. Isco’s blood began to boil.

“Don’t touch him,” that was James, hissing at the polish man. James wasn’t good at being scary, certainly not against someone who looked like an underground mafia boss, but he had no problems putting a hand on Lewandowski’s chest and pushing him again. “We’re leaving.”

Lewandowski looked ready to voice some kind of complaint, but James didn’t give him the time, pulling Toni out of the restaurant in seconds. Isco lingered behind, looking at Lewandowski’s pompous face for a second before turning around.

“I’m not leaving.”

Isco paused mid-step. He turned around just enough to see Lewandowski’s smirking face.

Lewandowski pushed the lapels of his jacket down, taking his time before he looked at Isco. He seemed ever so pleased to have caught Isco’s attention. “I’m not leaving the city. You can run away from me now, but you can’t hide forever.”

“We’ll see,” Isco replied, feeling like he had to fill the silence with something. Around him, people in the restaurant were beginning to notice there was something happening and turning to look at them. Isco turned around once more and left.

He met Toni and James two streets down from the restaurant, getting in the front seat next to James. The first thing he said was, “What a fucking prick.”

“I thought you were going to punch him,” James said, flashing Isco the briefest of grins.

“I thought you were going to punch him,” Isco replied, allowing himself to have this small moment of tranquility before reality crashed down on them.

On the back seat of the car, Toni let out a breathy, “Oh my god.”

“Are you okay?” Isco asked even though he already knew the answer.

“Been better,” Toni replied, sounding far away and distant. Isco reached out to squeeze his knee.

“We’re running out of places to hide,” he said to James, who was biting his bottom lip.

“I know, but we can’t go back to the apartment right now. Can you call Iker? I think his aunt left him her old house before she passed away. He told me once it was near Buendía. Tell him what happened, too.”

“You want us to stay there?” Isco asked as he searched for Iker’s name on his phone. He had it saved as CAPITÁN and the picture attached was of Iker, drunk beyond his mind, in a pirate costume. He had a stuffed parrot with a picture of Sergio duct taped to its face on his left shoulder while the real Sergio hung onto his right shoulder like a limpet.

“Until we figure out what to do,” James said. 

After his call was connected, Isco heard a voice that didn’t match Iker’s usual raspy and perpetually irked tone.

“Sergio?”

“The one and only. Iker’s in the shower right now. What can I do for you, Isco Disco?” Isco could picture Sergio, smiling, relaxed and at home with Iker, probably lounging around on the couch as he waited for Iker. 

Isco took a deep breath. He needed a second to steel himself before he got the words out. “We’ve been compromised. A guy from BayernM approached us earlier. Robert Lewandowski. Toni thinks he’s the one who killed Lukas.”

“I know he did it,” Toni murmured from the backseat, low enough that Sergio couldn’t hear him. “There are pictures of him in London tracking Lukas. He had to be involved. If he didn’t press the trigger himself, he still hired the person who did it.”

“Aw shit,” Sergio hissed. The noise level went down for a second. Isco heard him get up and calling for Iker. “What happened? Did he talk to you?”

“Yeah. He said he had been looking for Toni for a while. Looked like a top of the line asshole,” Isco said. His grip of on his phone grew tighter as he remembered Lewandowski’s smug grin.

Isco should have definitely punched him.

“Hold on, Iker’s here. I’ll put him on,” and with that Iker was on the line and his voice was exactly what Isco needed to hear. Sergio was amazing, as a person and as a police officer, but Iker was more than that. He was the calm in the eye of a storm. Always a steady fixture, unwavering and strong. He was only a man, but whenever Isco thought about him, he picture Iker as someone who could do just about anything out of stubbornness and passion alone.

Isco went through what happened, not skipping on any of the details in case Iker noticed something he hadn’t.

“Sergio and I are on our way to the precinct right now,” Iker said when Isco had finished. Isco felt a pang of guilt at dragging his superior officers out of their home at such a late hour, but it was overshadowed by his need to do anything he could to protect Toni. “In the meantime, I’ll text you the address of my aunt’s old home. There’s a key hidden in the backyard, inside the hole in the oak tree.”

“Okay,” Isco said. He bit the inside of his cheek, debating for a second on whether or not his next question was worth voicing. He had a feeling he already knew the answer to it. “So what do we do about Lewandowski?”

On the other end of the line, Iker sighed. “We’ll look into it, but there’s not much we can do. We can’t kick him out of the country or arrest him without reasonable cause, and if BayernM did their job right, which I’m sure they have, he probably has ten important meetings in Madrid over the course of the next month.”

“But that’s bullshit!” Isco yelled, making everyone in the car stare at him. Isco let out an embarrassed cough. “Sorry, I mean. He’s obviously here for a reason and I hardly believe it’s for some meetings.”

“I know, but we can’t prove that.”

“So what? You’re suggesting we do nothing?”

Iker made a low noise of frustration. “That’s not what I said. You’re both on protective detail full time. You can stay in my house in Buendía for as long as you need. You’re not to come into the city or make yourselves noticed, so no more trips outside to restaurants and games. Meanwhile, I’ll put Bale and Modric watching Lewandowski.”

Isco glanced at James, who was watching the road with too much attention, and Toni, who was looking at him.

“Iker—“ he started to say, cut off mid-sentence.

“I know, I know,” Iker said. He sounded tired. His voice dropped a few octaves. “This looks bad, but I promise I’ll get everyone working on the case and tell the goddamn Germans to move faster. Just keep Kroos safe until we can get him to court.”

“Not our best plan yet,” Isco said. If Iker were in the car with them the comment would have earned him a slap on the back of the head.

“Do your job, Isco. We’ll do ours and soon this whole thing will be over.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” he said before he hung up.

He explained the plan to the others and the rest of the drive was spent in silence. Isco’s eyelids began to slip about an hour into the drive. The heat and the exhaustion heightened him down, but his mind was still too hyper for him to sleep. He turned around in his seat to face Toni, who looked as uncomfortable as he did.

“Tell me about Germany,” Isco said.

Toni stared at him for a couple of seconds, shocked by the sudden question, but his confusion slowly melted away. “What do you want to hear?”

“Anything,” Isco replied. Anything that would distract them.

“Tell us about Greifswald,” James pitched in. “That’s where you grew up, right?” he looked at Toni through the rearview, smiling when he caught Toni’s eye.

Tentatively, Toni smiled back. 

Toni’s voice was a soothing, low murmur in their ears. He spoke a lot about his younger brother, the games they used to play and how they used to be best friends. Isco didn’t miss the note of longing in his voice, and he wondered how much a vacation to America would cost. He spoke about the fall of the Berlin Wall and how he didn’t know how things were like before, but that his parents spoke about the change as if it was a breath of fresh air after far too long spent trapped inside.

He said he missed the food and that part Isco simply didn’t understand. He had tried German food a couple of times now, and while their million variety of sausages had a special kind of appeal, they didn’t beat a dish of Gazpacho or Migas by a long shot.

Also, there was the thing about the naps.

“You have to let it go,” Toni whined and if Isco were a lesser man, this would be the point where he show his—nonexistent—musical talent to the world. 

Instead he laughed, full of heart and mirth, and twisted in his seat until he could face Toni. “But they’re so good.”

Toni groaned. Isco caught James’ eye and they both laughed even harder. 

“You people are obsessed,” he said.

“Says the person who stays up until two in the morning to watch a second-rate American basketball team,” James replied, making Toni gasp.

“‘Second-rate’?” Toni’s voice came out as a hysterical squeak. Isco got a heartburn from how hard he was laughing.

And, of course, that prompted Toni to go on a rant about how amazing and wonderful the Dallas Mavericks were. Isco listened with one ear. He already knew most of the speech by heart, having spent many of those nights awake to watch the game as well. He didn’t understand a thing anything about basketball, but Toni’s enthusiasm was easily contagious and Isco enjoyed watching his reactions throughout a match.

Toni was still describing the finer details of Dallas Maverick’s playing tactics when they arrived at their destination.

Iker’s house by the lake, with a perfect view of the green expanse lying behind it and the shimmering blue waters in front of it. This was entirely lost on Isco and the others, who couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark. It took twenty minutes and a quarter of his iPhone’s battery life to find the house key. Speaking of which, they hadn’t brought a charger, or anything besides the clothes they were wearing, with them.

“Do you think we can talk someone into driving here with our phone chargers?” Isco asked. He doubted their ability to find a cheap electronic store nearby.

“I’ll text Marcelo later,” James said.

Iker’s house looked abandoned and Isco wondered when was the last time Iker had stepped foot inside. He’d never heard Iker talking about coming here on vacation. He usually went with Sergio to Sevilla.

The place was, technically, a two-bedroom house, if you considered the creepy looking attic covered in dust and cobwebs a bedroom.

They didn’t.

The other room was by the kitchen and it had a large double bed, big enough to contain the three of them if they all squeezed in together. There was also a couch in the living room that had seen better days.

They didn’t discuss sleeping arrangements as they explored the house. Isco figured they’d each find their own space and things between them would fall into place naturally as they tended to do.

“I think we should have stopped somewhere to buy pajamas or at least some food. This place is very…” James hesitated for a second as he thought of a way to word himself without sounding like an ungrateful jackass, finally settling on, “bare.”

Isco hummed in agreement. 

Eventually they found canned tomato and some expired spaghetti that didn’t seem rotten, so they made a meal to compensate the one they’d had to skip in the restaurant earlier. It seemed crazy now to think they’d been having a nice, happy meal only two hours ago and now they were in a dead lady’s home attempting to make a food miracle.

James was their designated cook for the evening, with Toni as his unhelpful assistant who mainly leaned against the counters and occasionally suggested something brilliant like, ‘don’t burn the food’ and the classic ‘don’t kill us’. Isco was in the living room, having decided to continue his exploration of the house.

“Why is he here? And why now?” He heard Toni ask.

“The evidence from last month. They were probably waiting all this time, unsure of how much you knew.”

“And now what? I already gave everything I have.”

“But they don’t know that. They think if you were saving that, you might have been saving more, so they sent Lewandowski to scare you.”

“Shit,” Toni closed his eyes, hanging his head between his arms. Isco saw his chest move, the way he seemed to suck in the air as if it hurt to breathe. James, who was closer to Toni, laid a hand on the back of his neck.

“What do we do?” he asked.

“We play Monopoly,” Isco pulled out an old box from the closet he’d been exploring. It was covered with a thick layer of dust and knowing their luck, half the pieces were gone. “And we learn how to cook since it’s about time one of us figures it out.”

The other two turned to look at him, giving him equally baffled expressions. “Well, it’s not as if there’s much else we can do, is there? We can’t go anywhere, so we might as well do something that will keep our minds off things.”

“Can’t we watch television like normal people?” James asked.

“Afraid to get your ass handed to you in a children’s board game, Rodríguez?”

James grinned. Toni laughed.

“You’re on, Alarcón. The loser sleeps in the attic.”

Isco froze. That attic was _rank_.

“I’m allergic to dust,” he said.

James squinted at him. “No, you’re not.”

Isco turned to Toni. James knew him too well and was a lost cause. “I really am.”

James turned to Toni as well. “He’s really not. He’s just bad with money and he knows he’s going to lose before he’s even started.”

Toni glanced from one to another. Isco made his best puppy eyes face. “We shouldn’t risk it. Allergy attacks can be pretty nasty.”

Isco whooped. James scoffed.

Their dinner tasted like perfume. Edible perfume, mind you. James went for seconds, never one to turn down food. Isco considered throwing his down the toilet, then reevaluated his choices when he remembered they had literally nothing else to eat. Toni looked like he was going to throw up after every bite.

They played Monopoly while they ate. Toni was in charge of the bank, James the game cards and Isco of making sure no one spilled tomato sauce on Iker’s rug.

Isco lost, of course, but there was no surprise there. He owned a vinyl disc of Lady Gaga’s best hits and a vinyl player he’d bought for the occasion. ‘Bad with money’ was almost a compliment.

“Are you going to take the couch?” James asked when he and Toni were finished wiping the floor with him. 

“Are you going to make me?” Isco shot back.

James shook his head, smiling at him. “Couldn’t even if I tried. You’re worse than a mule once you’ve set your mind on something.”

Isco took a small bow. “Thank you.”

He decided to give Toni backup for the rest of the game, mostly by giving him pep talks and massaging his shoulders.

“You can do this, Kroos. Just focus up, think good thoughts and give it your best. ”

“I’m rolling a dice, I don’t see how thinking good thoughts will help,” Toni said. Isco pinched him.

“That’s a loser’s attitude and I don’t train losers. Don’t forget to breathe on them for luck.”

Toni mumbled something about Isco not being his trainer, thank you very much, but breathed on the dice obediently and got an impressive five. Isco patted him on the back.

The game continued for another thirty minutes in which Isco only tried to cheat for Toni three times and was put in a headlock by James once. Toni won in the end and again, there was no surprise there. Toni had a master’s in economics and James had been the one to tell Isco about the Lady Gaga vinyl.

The three of them shared the double bed and Isco marveled at how simple it was to travel from James to Toni and back again. He fit against them both so well, meeting them piece for piece. He thought about what he’d do when Toni left. Acting on his feelings seemed unwise and too stupid, even for him, but so did not saying anything.

He stood on a thin bridge, floating in the air, not connected to anything else. There was only one way for him to get back on solid ground and that was for him to jump down. The question was how and, more importantly, where.

“Do you think Lewandowski will find us?” Toni asked after they’d turned off the lights. Isco was in the middle of the bed tonight, having called dibs on the shower and jumped ahead of everyone.

“He won’t, but if he does we’ll shoot him. And Isco will punch him in the face,” James murmured.

“I will,” Isco agreed.

“Before or after you shoot him?” Toni asked.

Isco thought about it. “Before. Punching a man who’s been shot is kind of cowardly,” and Isco was no coward.

He put a hand on top of Toni’s and a leg across James’. Neither of them pushed him away. Isco exhaled. Maybe he wouldn’t have to jump. Maybe things would work themselves out and he would just have to fall.

Two days later, in which many battles break out during hours spent exploring the Casillas’ family board game collection, Marcelo shows up with their phone chargers, clothes, and news.

“I brought my DVD collection. James said Isco was killing everyone, a board game at a time,” Marcelo said as he marched into the house.

Isco immediately turned to shoot daggers at James, who limited himself to grinning at Isco and accepting the bags Marcelo had brought in. He took them to their room while Marcelo made himself right at home.

“I’m teaching people the value of face to face relationships.” Isco had heard that one on Oprah. Marcelo scoffed.

“If this is some kind of weird sex thing of yours, spare me the details, irmãozinho.” Marcelo threw himself on the couch while Isco sputtered and Toni laughed from the sidelines. “This place is actually quite nice,” he mused.

“You should see the attic. Real homey,” Isco said, walking over to Toni and sitting by his side. He’d lost countless games since their first round of Monopoly, often with sleeping in the attic as the loser’s punishment, but he’d yet to step inside the room for a second time.

“Do you think Iker will let me spend a few days here next summer?”

“You?” Isco scoffed, rolling his eyes in the most pompous, over-the-top way possible. “Never.”

Before Marcelo got the chance to reply, James came back to the living room holding a black cap. The word ‘FUCK’ was emblazoned on the front in gold letters. 

“Did you raid Jesé’s closet for clothes?” he asked.

“I did, actually! I couldn’t find my spare key of your apartment, so I went around asking people for some spare clothes. What?” he asked when he saw everyone looking at him. “It’s not like I was going to buy you all a new closet or break into your places.”

As they talked, Isco watched Toni’s face, trying to gauge how he felt by the microscopic chance in his expressions. If the smile on his face were anything to go by, he seemed to find their interactions amusing, but there was also a stress line between his eyebrows, so Isco couldn’t be sure.

Isco wondered what it would take to get him to wear Jesé’s cap.

“Will you be staying for dinner? We have chicken,” James sat next to Marcelo and got his hair ruffled and his cheeks pinched for it, attacked by an onslaught of affection.

“You can cook now?”

“They can burn food and then boast about how none of us are at risk of getting salmonella,” Toni, the traitor, said. Marcelo cackled and got up to high five him. 

“I can’t believe you’re still living up the bachelor lifestyle when you’re all practically married. Anyway,” he added before Isco could tell him to shove it where the sun didn’t shine, “I live a busy jet-setter life, and by that I mean I have a date with the new season of Masterchef and two piles of paperwork to get through, so I’m afraid I have to refuse your kind invitation.”

“Suit yourself,” Isco said, matching Marcelo’s grin with an identical one of his own.

“How are things back in Madrid?” James asked.

“Quiet. We’ve been tracking all of Lewandowski’s movements. He is in the city for a bunch of meetings, which, as far as we can tell, are legit. He’s gone to a couple of tourist spots, been near your apartment once or twice, but you live near the Parque so that’s not saying much.”

“Has he said anything?” Isco asked.

“No, but we picked up a call from him to Philipp Lahm from BayernM. He said something about still being on the look out for the package,” Marcelo said with a pointed glance at Toni, who froze when James and Isco turned to stare at him.

“I don’t have anything,” he said with bug-eyed trepidation.

Marcelo sighed. “Yeah, we figured. We think he’s in the city to scare you, make you wanna step down from the case as a witness and say the evidence you presented was made-up.”

“You think that’s what he wanted to do as well when he followed Lukas to London?” Toni asked, and this was the side of him Isco and James didn’t see often. The one that had gotten him a master’s degree at twenty-two from one of the best universities in Germany and a position in BayernM’s board at twenty-five. 

“That hasn’t been connected to him,” Marcelo said, meeting Toni’s gaze eye to eye.

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Toni sounded so sure of himself. Calm. Shrewd. Isco was more into it than a normal person should, especially considering Toni was ripping one of Isco’s best friends a new one.

After a few seconds of tense silence, Marcelo said, “He’s not going to kill you. We have two pairs of eyes on him at all times and meanwhile you have the best protection the city of Madrid can offer sleeping in the same house as you.”

“You could kick him out of the country,” Toni suggested. Another moment passed, charged with heavy silence before Marcelo broke out a huge grin.

“I like him. He’s feisty,” he said to James and Isco, winking at them before he faced Toni again. “That’s the current game plan. We don’t have anything to charge him with—yet—so Iker has set Sergio on a bunch of bureaucrats. He’s hoping Sergio will annoy them until they cooperate with us and do their job.”

“That will either turn out spectacularly in our favor or horribly against us,” Isco said, frowning.

Marcelo shrugged. “Pretty much. Any other orders?” he asked, turning to Toni, who seemed to have caught up with himself and now looked bashful.

“No, sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you what to do—“

“It’s fine. There is a lot at stake here and you’re worried. It’s totally fine You should consider a career in Spanish law enforcement after the trial is over. You’d fit in quite well.”

“Thanks?” it came out more as a question than an affirmation, but Marcelo was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“No problem. I’m off now, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids.”

He kissed James loudly on the forehead and squeezed the air out of Isco’s lungs with a bear hug, but limited himself to a small shoulder to shoulder hug with Toni, who seemed to be at a loss.

“A career in law enforcement,” Isco murmured as he examined Toni. He could probably do it. He was definitely smart enough, and he was in shape. He had the time and the patience, although Isco could already picture Toni’s frustrated face when politics came to play and changed the rules of the game halfway through a match.

“Would you like that?” James asked and Isco struggled between the urge to slap or hug him. He was curious as well, but at the same time he knew that this was just a one time thing. Toni had a life outside their circle. He had goals and aspirations of his own. He probably wanted nothing to do with law enforcement after the trial was over, would be tired of the whole thing and desperate to lea—

“I don’t think there are many positions open to germans, though.”

“You underestimate our ability to get around the rules,” James smiled, proud and happy. 

Isco watched as if standing outside a window, looking in. It was obvious that he wanted Toni to stay, but their job was dangerous. He didn’t want Toni to be at risk for the rest of his life. And yes, he recognized the hypocrisy behind said thought.

“You don’t have to. I’m sure there are other things you’d like to do better than chasing after low-lives and doing paperwork,” Isco said, his mouth getting ahead of him. Toni and James just stared at him. “I’m just saying. You don’t have to stay. You have your whole life still ahead of you.”

Toni shrugged. “Maybe I want to stay,” he said, staring at Isco with his usual brand of muted force.

Isco stared back for as long as he could, eventually breaking eye contact when the pressure in his chest began to increase. His anxiety had always been a heavy force inside his chest, this unstoppable gas that filled all the spaces between his ribs and threatened to crack him open.

“Did Marcelo bring us any bathing suits? I’d love to go for a swim in the lake,” Isco said, changing the subject. Everyone in the room exhaled. The moment passed and they could breathe again.

“It’s November,” James argued. Isco raised a single eyebrow of judgment. “Loser’s attitude?”

Isco nodded solemnly. “Loser’s attitude,” he agreed.

Another two days passed in which they discovered that Toni, despite being german and used to lower temperatures than them, was an absolute misery at handling the cold.

“You’re a box full of mysteries, Kroos,” Isco said. He was in the lake, with water up to his waist. James was somewhere to his vicinity proving to the world he was secretly a merman by holding his breath underwater for longer than was humanly possible. Toni sat on the shore with a blanket over his shoulders. He wore _gloves_.

“I’m a normal human being who looked at the temperature before leaving the house and is aware that it’s less than twenty degrees outside right now,” Toni replied.

Isco shook his head. “A box full of mysteries,” he repeated before diving underwater in search for James.

The only times they left the house was when they needed to go into town to buy food, and by ‘they’ what was meant was James. Toni was happy to eat string beans for the rest of this life as long as they didn’t taste like despair and mold. Isco had given up on cooking again after almost setting fire to the house when he tried to make toast.

“Alright, so I’m buying cheese, eggs, and fish.”

“Fish?” Isco asked. He squinted at James.

“Fish.”

“But I don’t like fish,” Isco mumbled, sounding like a petulant child. He was napping on the couch while Toni watched Breaking Bad on the floor. They’d given up on their board game adventures a while ago.

James grinned. “Tough luck because we’re having it for dinner.”

“You’re a cruel man, James Rodríguez.”

“There’s a great opportunity for an animal cruelty joke here, but I’m not going to make it,” Toni said. Isco stretched as far as he could to kick him in the back of the head.

“Asshole,” he grumbled.

James left them to their antics, off to buy fish and some quinoa and a yoga mat while he was it. 

It was no surprise when there was a knock on the door twenty minutes later. 

“He forgot his wallet, didn’t he?” Toni asked. Isco laughed.

“Probably,” he searched for whatever James could have forgotten while he walked to the door, but he couldn’t see anything. “Hey, what did you—“ were the only words he got out before he saw a smirking face and something hard hit him in the neck. Isco blinked as his knees gave up beneath him.

In a flash of light, the world went out.

* * *

There was a voice inside his skull, bouncing from side to inside and breaking everything in its path. Isco couldn’t understand what it was saying, the words nothing but gibberish to him. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t get his mouth to move. His tongue was too fat inside his mouth.

The voice continued to wreck his brain, but as time passed the words took shape and Isco began to recognize them.

“Isco. Isco, wake up, come on. Isco!” 

Isco opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. Light. There was way too much light. Oh god, he was going to throw up.

He was propped up by someone, backed against a wall. Isco’s chest pulled in a few stuttering breaths until he didn’t feel sick again. 

“What happened?” Isco croaked. James was in front of him and he looked—not good. Definitely not good.

“Where’s Toni?” James asked and Isco remembered now. The smirking face. 

“Lewandowski.”

James swore. “Stay there,” he said as he got up on his feet. Isco wasn’t capable of so much as telling him he was too out of it to move, much less capable of actually moving.

By the time James came back, however, Isco was more awake. This didn’t work in his favor because the more awake he got, the more he freaked out.

“Where is he? Is he okay?” Isco asked. Blind panic was beginning to seize him, the kind that he needed to repress as deeply as possible so that he could do his job.

James shook his head. “He’s not here. There’s no blood or signs of a fight.”

“So he took him,” Isco concluded. “James—“ Isco tried to say, cut off when his friend thrusted a water bottle at him.

“Drink first, then tell me everything that happened.”

Isco did as he was told. He gave James a quick recap of what he remembered, but there wasn’t much to say. He had opened the door, faced Lewandowski for less than a second and then the next thing he knew he was on the floor.

“He shot you with a tranquilizer dart. You’ve still got the mark on your neck,” James said. Isco’s hand flew up and like James said, there was a tiny puncture wound in the soft tissue beneath his chin. A second wave of nausea hit him, but this time it wasn’t caused by the remains of the anesthesia swimming in his veins.

“Jesus Christ, the son of a bitch came prepared. How did he even find us?” Isco found it hard to swallow. His mind kept playing the moment when he’d let Toni down. Lewandowski’s smirking face. What Toni looked like with his skull mashed against the floor.

Something inside Isco’s chest broke.

“Don’t know, but we’re going to find out. We’re going to find him.” There was so much force behind James’ words, real anger, but there was also a hint of a tremor, a shadow of fear.

There was no point in saying what they were both thinking, but Isco said it anyway. There was a grip around his lungs that made it hard to breathe and the more he spoke, the tighter it got. Isco had always been a bit of masochist.

“Lewandowski killed Podolski.”

“Doesn’t mean he’ll do it to Toni. He killed Podolski from the rooftop of building in front of his with a sniper. If he took Toni, there has to be a reason.”

“Or he took him to the woods and will kill him there,” Isco reasoned, which earned him a slap to the face from James. Isco gasped. The sharp sting of the pain brought tears to his eyes, but it also uncurled the grip inside him.

“We’ll find him. _Alive_ ,” James dictated and oh, he was so much better than Isco in times like these. Isco was the cynic. The hot-head. The one who had let Lewandowski come and take Toni. James was the man who faced a tsunami about to tear through a village full of innocent people and told Poseidon to fuck off.

James pulled him up, a hand on the back of Isco’s neck and the other on the front of his shirt. He wasn’t rough with Isco despite the strength of his grip. In a single moment of quietly, Isco breathed him in, breathed him out. 

Their lips touched, nothing but a graze. Isco leaned back to look James in the eye, but James didn’t let him get far. He pulled Isco in and kissed him again, this time more soundly.

“We will find him,” he whispered before he moved away. He had his phone in his hand and Iker on speakerphone the next second. Isco nodded. He clenched his jaw and balled his hands into two iron fists, looking away as he steeled himself.

They will find him.


	5. Chamartín

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done!! It's done!!!!! Huge, huge thanks to everyone who has commented on this fic or sent me a message about it. Your feedback was what kept me going. I'm super proud of this story, as silly as it might be, and I'm glad I got the chance to share it with all of you. Hope you all like this last chapter! x
> 
>  **Warning** : this chapter contains mentions of torture and blood. There's nothing too graphic, but be on the lookout if either of those is a trigger for you. Please leave a comment if you want to know more details before reading.

While James spoke to Iker, Isco checked the rest of the house for any clues as to where Lewandowski might have taken Toni. Going through the motions was reassuring, even though he knew he wouldn’t find anything. Lewandowski must have shot Toni with a tranquilizer dart the moment Isco’s body hit the floor, then carried him outside to his car. 

“Are there any tire marks outside?” Isco yelled.

He was in their shared bedroom. The bed was still unmade because there was no universe where any of them could ever be bothered with making the bed. There was a shirt on the floor near the dresser. Either Toni’s or Isco’s, since James always put his clothes away after getting dressed, Isco never did, and Toni was a hit and miss.

There was a pause before James yelled back. “I’ll check.”

Isco moved to the bathroom near the tall wooden wardrobe they never got a chance to use. All of Toni’s stuff was still there. His toothbrush, his weird purple shampoo for blonde hair and his bathrobe. Everything. 

Everything was still there, except for him.

Isco heard something snap, didn’t realize it was the toothbrush he was holding until he looked down at his hands. He threw the broken pieces of plastic into the trashcan near the toilet, checking the time on his phone before returning to the living room. A little over an hour had passed since James had left them to go to the grocery store. 

“Anything?” he asked as he met James by the doorway.

“One car. Probably a jeep from the size of the tires. I took pictures.”

“Isco,” Iker called from James’ phone. “Tell me what happened.”

Isco inhaled for a long moment, filling his lungs with oxygen. “There isn’t anything to say. Lewandowski knocked on the door. I didn’t check who it was. I should have. I know I should have, but I thought it was James and I—“ his voice cracked. “I didn’t check. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Isco. This is not your fault,” Iker said in his usual tone of professional calm. “Anything else? Was there someone else with him?”

“No. Not that I saw, no.”

Even though he couldn’t see him, Isco could still hear Iker think. Wheels were turning inside his head, thoughts were being arranged, and a list of things they needed to do was being formed. As each second passed, Isco felt the ground beneath his feet grow firmer and his fear begin to recede. 

He was still terrified, of course. The thought of losing Toni made him physically sick, but he also knew that he couldn’t let his brain terrorize him. He was a police officer. Not letting fear get the best of him was what he did. Now, more than ever, he needed to get his head in the game and do his job.

“How did he find us? And how did he get here without us knowing? Weren’t Bale and Modrić watching him?” Isco asked. He pointed to James’ car and James nodded. They locked the door to the house and began their journey back to Madrid.

“Sergio is looking in to how he found you as we speak. As for the second question, Lewandowski went to a ‘business brunch’, whatever the fuck that is, this morning. We think he must have slipped through the back door at some point and used another car to get there.”

“Have you checked his apartment yet?”

“Empty. Marcelo is there right now. He’s checking to see if there’s anything Lewandowski might have left behind by accident.” 

“He didn’t. He’s smart and knows we were watching him. He knows a lot more than he should. Iker, is there a m—”

His captain cut him off. “Yes, and we’re looking into that as well.”

It wasn’t unusual for Iker to be a step ahead of everyone else, but there was something else in his voice that said this conversation was one they needed to have in person, preferably somewhere private.

“What do you have so far?” James asked. There was the sound of feet moving and a door closing on the other side of the line.

“Lots of dead ends and smoke. I’m having Sami translate everything we can get our hands on. Emails, business transactions, descriptions of Lewandowski’s meetings in the city…”

“We don’t have time for that. Have you checked what properties BayernM owns in Madrid? They must have some rentals here, places where Lewandowski could be hiding him in,” Isco didn’t care for the pitiful whine in his voice. He’d whine and beg all he could if it increased their chances of getting Toni back.

Iker made a noise of disquiet. “Lewandowski isn’t that stupid.”

“No, but he also doesn’t speak Spanish. We’ve got a profile on him. He’s the lonely wolf type. He wouldn’t have let his contact here get too much of a hand on him, so he had to go through other ways to find a place. He would risk using BayernM if he only needs to keep Toni for a short while,” and even though he didn’t say it, the word _alive_ still hung in the air for everyone to hear.

“If all Lewandowski wants is for Toni to be dead, he would have killed him already,” Iker replied. From Isco’s side, James mouthed ‘ _see?_ ’ at him. “There was a rumor,” Iker continued, and in the space it took him to finish his sentence, Isco’s entire body tensed. “That Toni was still hiding information on BayernM.”

“You or Sergio?” Isco asked. James turned his head sharply to look at him before he looked back at the road, but Isco just sighed in reply.

He’d worked with both of them since the moment he joined the force. They were like older brothers to him. Older brothers with lots of good qualities, but lots of flaws too. One of those flaws was that sometimes, in the process of doing their jobs, they skipped a step and risked falling down the stairs for the sake of getting to the top faster.

Isco knew what it was like. He wasn’t much different from them in that respect. That, nevertheless, didn’t stop the wave of anger that threatened to drown him when he heard Iker’s next admission.

“Me. We had to be sure of who was on our side and who wasn’t.”

Isco wanted to laugh. “And what about now? Do you know who’s the mole?”

Iker sounded almost pained as he spoke. “No, but we’re closer to finding out than we were before. There wasn’t meant to be any risk, Isco. We didn’t let anyone know you guys were there. I don’t know how Lewandowski found you,” he said, and wasn’t that nice, that he didn’t know, that he’d gambled on Toni’s safety and still ended up not knowing a damn thing.

“And what happens when Lewandowski finds out that Toni doesn’t have anything? What then?”

“We’ll find him before that happens,” Iker said. It sounded like a prophecy; something inevitable. Isco would give everything he owned for Iker to be right.

“Anything else?” 

“Not yet. I’ll call you as soon as we find anything. In the meantime, come to the precinct. You can take a look at the documents Sami is translating and see if anything sparks a thought.”

“Alright,” Isco said and ended the call. James didn’t say anything, so Isco let the silence fill the car.

Around them, the landscape shifted like a growing thing. The large wooden areas gave way to open fields full of drying weed and knee-height bushes. These, too, were eventually replaced by assortments of houses and the occasional village. They were on the edge of Madrid, the space where the city wasn’t yet a city, and nature still prevailed over man’s vision.

As they drove, Isco contemplated how good it would feel to smash Lewandowski’s face. It wasn’t the most productive use of his time, but his hands were tied by how little he knew. He could only hope that things would start slotting in place once they reached the precinct.

The chances of survival for kidnapped victims weren’t great. Each second that passed was a second closer to death, but Toni was smart. He would find a way to buy himself some time. He had to know Isco and James were coming for him.

No matter what it took, they would find him. 

They were driving by Guadalajara when James’ voice filled the empty space between them. “Did you know? About the mole?”

“I had a feeling there was a leak, but I thought it was on the German’s side, not ours. You?”

“No,” James shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

“It might not be anyone in our station. It might be a bureaucrat with access to more information than he should have, or a janitor with a few key passwords,” Isco mused out loud. James hummed in agreement.

“It might,” he said. They let the conversation die after that. Now was not the time to put people on the chopping board so they could try to figure out who was the traitor. That path was a slippery slope, and before they knew it they would be doubting all of their coworkers. Isco believed he and James had the skills and knowledge to rival anyone else, but right now they needed all the help they could get.

The sun was setting as they drove through Ciudad Lineal, immersing the city in a lazy orange glow. They passed by their apartment, so close to the park where they had spent hours after hours relaxing in. Isco wondered if he could stomach spending the night there or if he would have to find another place to sleep tonight.

A lot of their colleagues had already clocked out by the time they got to the station, but a lot of them were still there as well. Isco couldn’t lift his eyes to face most of them, although he did see the sympathy look Modrić threw at him, and the passing hug Cristiano gave James.

They didn’t stop by their desks on their way to Iker’s office. Their old space was nothing but a dust collector nowadays. Someone had moved their things so the empty space could be used for storage. Isco suspected Benzema, who never got around to filing his paperwork and usually left it wherever he could.

“Iker,” James greeted as they stepped into his office. A whiteboard had been put up in front of the bookshelves and it was now covered with pictures and pieces of text. There was everything there, from Lewandowski’s annoying face to a picture of Toni in a fitted three-piece suit.

“You’re here. Good. Sami has some documents he wants you to look over. In the meantime, I’ve sent Cristiano to ask for a warrant to take a look at BayernM’s properties in Madrid,” Iker flashed them a wry grin. “You can imagine how well that’s going.”

“How long will that take? We don’t have the time for bullshit politics,” Isco knew that he was not only repeating himself, but also stating the obvious. It bore to mention anyway, as it was nothing but the crystal clear truth. They didn’t have time for warrants or faux actions. Toni had been missing for three hours. By now, he would be awake, at the mercy of Robert Lewandowski, who didn’t seem the type to give his prey time to rest before he attacked.

“Ronaldo is talking to judge Martinez as we speak. We should have the information on our desks tomorrow morning. On top of that, I’m sending officers to interrogate the people Lewandowski has been having meetings with this past month.”

“Who are you sending?” James asked, which read as _who can we trust?_

“Illarra, Nacho, Lucas… Anyone we can spare.”

“Is that a good idea?” James looked back at the door to make sure it was closed. “What if one of them is the mole?”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Iker said, ending the discussion. Isco felt the urge to close the few meters between them and land Iker a solid one. He loved the man, but it was his stupid rumor that had gotten them into trouble in the first place and it was obvious his methods weren’t working right now.

It took a lot for Isco to contain his anger. He felt James’ hand graze his. It was a lingering touch, warm and barely there at all. Isco counted from ten to zero. It wasn’t Iker’s fault that Toni had been kidnapped, just like it wasn’t Isco’s. They had done their jobs to the best of their abilities and then a Polish asshole had come swooping in and unleashed chaos. It wasn’t their fault, but they would all make damn sure they fixed it.

Isco got closer to the whiteboard so he could inspect it. There were pictures of Lewandowski scattered around the city with a different outfit each time, so Bale must have taken them. A couple of pictures of his apartment and it was as empty as it had been described. Lewandowski must have wiped it clean before he left.

The information Sami had waiting for them wasn’t much. As far as Isco could tell, if anything was said in code, it was vague enough for them not to notice. He’d gone to meetings with several different agencies in the city and discussed a bit of everything from marketing plans, to joint business ventures and the best place in the city to get a sushi meal.

The overall inefficiency of their investigation method didn’t stop James and Isco from pouring into each document as if it contained all the answers they needed. Isco didn’t recall getting up for food, but when he looked up to grab an email he’d read earlier to cross-check it with another one, he found a sandwich on his desk with a yellow post-it note on top that said _eat :)_ and then below it _we’ll find him_.

Isco glanced up, but there wasn’t anyone nearby. Iker was still in his office and everyone else had left. Isco looked at his phone to check the hour.

“Shit, it’s already eleven,” he cursed, sitting straighter in his chair.

“Is it?” James asked, not even bothering to look at Isco.

After a second glance, Isco threw the paper in his hand into the ‘trash’ pile. It was about some meeting Lewandowski had to attend that had been adjourned for a later date. Isco looked at the three piles on his desk. One was for the things he’d yet to read, which was nearly empty, another was for information he needed to look over for a second time and another was for the trash. 

The trash and need a second look piles were about the same height since Isco refused to dismiss by accident anything that seemed important.

Looking at James’ workstation, his partner was in the same situation. Isco could read the exhaustion written on his face with ease. Red had replaced the white of his eyes and there were ink stains all over his hands and on his forehead. He had been biting his lip and chewing on it, giving it the appearance of being bruised. He looked terrible, to put it in simpler terms.

Isco imagined he looked much the same.

Isco ate his sandwich—roast beef, his favorite—while he looked over the rest of the emails and files. At around midnight, Iker called it a night and tried to kick them out of the precinct, but his efforts were met with two pairs of cold shoulders.

“I know you’re worried, but you can’t spend the entire evening here. A full night’s rest, before you go knocking on BayernM’s doorstep, will do a lot more good than having you killing yourselves over paperwork,” Iker said.

Isco stared at him. He was right. Isco knew he was right. That didn’t mean he had to like it, though. He glanced at James, who had the same vexed expression as Isco.

“Ten more minutes,” James said. 

Iker sighed. “I don’t want you dead on your feet tomorrow.”

Isco shrugged. Sleep was the least of his worries at the moment.

Iker left, quietly and on his own, leaving Isco and James to continue working. It was only when his phone informed him that it was half past one in the morning, that Isco got up and said, “Let’s go home.”

James didn’t look up from the papers laid out in front of him, so Isco walked around his desk and pulled him up by his shoulders. “Come on, it’s time for us to leave,” he said. He didn’t move away from James, who didn’t move an inch either, so they stayed as they were instead, Isco with his arms wrapped around James and James as still as a statue.

“He might be—“ James started, pausing mid-sentence when the words refused to come out. Inside his head, Isco whispered _don’t say it, don’t say it, please don’t—_ “getting tortured right now for information that doesn’t exist.”

“He isn’t. That’s not how BayernM works. There’s nothing in the files indicating that Lewandowski is cruel to that point.”

“There’s nothing in the files indicating that he isn’t.”

“Toni is smart. He’ll lead Lewandowski on a goose chase, buy himself time. We’ll find him. Tomorrow. We will, James,” said Isco, hoping that if he spoke with enough conviction, his words would become reality. 

Their roles had switched, if only for a moment, and now Isco was the one supporting James. It was good they had each other. Isco doesn’t know what he would do if he was alone.

They went to Isco’s apartment together, like they had done months ago before they met Toni. James drove and Isco stared at the streets as they drove through them. Buzzing lights swam and blurred in front of his eyes. He didn’t take any of it in. He didn’t need to. The streets hadn’t changed in the months he had been away, living and breathing somewhere else; he had.

This time, when they climbed up the four sets of stairs to Isco’s apartment, they weren’t drunk, but they still leaned on each other as if they were. When James leaned in to kiss him, inside Isco’s bedroom, Isco didn’t push him away.

James’ lips were soft and chapped. One of his hands was fisted around the fabric of Isco’s shirt and the other was around his neck. Both had an iron grip on Isco, the kind that begged for permission and acceptance.

For a long time, Isco had wondered what it would be like to kiss James. What it would be like to have this. He had gotten lost in the thoughts more times than he could keep track of. He had seen James smile a thousand times, always brighter than the sun, and he had wanted to make him smile a thousand more.

Right now, kissing James was nothing like he’d imagined. Right now, it was desperate and needy. It was the rope keeping him attached to land and saving him from being stranded at sea. It was comforting and warm. It was everything he had.

“Did you know,” James said. He put a breath’s space between them and kept Isco tucked against him with an arm around Isco’s waist. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the very first moment I saw you.”

“That was years ago,” Isco stated.

He would be lying if he said he didn’t remember that day. James had shown up at the precinct for the first time one sunny Tuesday morning. He was straight out of the academy, all fresh-faced innocence, and he had beams of light for smiles. Isco had seen him and shaken his head, thinking the kid—older than him, but still a kid—had gone into the wrong career. Either his optimism would go or he would. It was the way things worked in their line of work.

It was only when they started working together, two months later, that Isco realized he had been mistaken. James’ optimism made him stronger, not weaker. There seemed to be so little he couldn’t do, with his unique charm, skills and spirit. Isco had been transfixed from that day onwards and he had yet to be released.

“I know. It was the same for him, at the airport. I saw him and I thought he looked uncomfortable, and then I thought about how I wanted to kiss him until he felt better,” James said. There wasn’t a single thread of anxiety or doubt in his voice.

“Did you ever do it?” Isco asked.

“No, not yet. But I will ask if I can when we find him. I’m not waiting anymore.” James kissed Isco again. “You should talk to him, too.”

“Yes,” Isco whispered before he kissed him back. 

Neither of them slept much that night. Isco spent most of his time tossing and turning. He thought about all the places Lewandowski could have taken Toni to. A warehouse. An empty office space. Somewhere easy to clean and with no nosy neighbors. Basically, almost all of Madrid.

They were at the precinct the next morning before the cleaning staff had even left. Cristiano was already there, as well as Iker and Sergio. Isco appreciated their help more than words could describe.

They had been granted their warrant to go check all of BayernM’s spaces and it was now time to organize themselves. BayernM had seven rentals in Madrid, of which only one was long-term, and they owned two more spaces for storage purposes. The address list was split in two and then whoever was available got assigned to go with each team. Isco and James were in charge of one group while Cristiano and Marcelo got the other.

The plan was simple. They went in fast and quiet so that they didn’t give anyone time to run or alert their presence. They took in anyone suspicious. They got Toni back.

Even though they had been away from proper police work since August, it was easy for them to fall into their natural roles. They moved with light-footed grace, pushed people’s faces against the walls with deserved anger and broke down any doors in their path. 

The first place on their list, one of the properties owned by BayernM, was a storage house in Villaverde. It was a simple garage, empty save for a few bags of garbage and an old shelf. They spoke to the owners of the building and passers-by, but no one remembered seeing anyone come in or out of the garage in the past few weeks.

The second place, in Vicálvaro, was an office space. BayernM had a tourist department that mainly specialized in luxury accommodations, and this was one of the offices they worked from. They were quick to get everyone on their feet and away from their desks, but again, the place was a bust. Lewandowski wouldn’t have gone for a space full of people anyway. He would want somewhere isolated and this was the opposite of that.

Their luck continued in a similar fashion throughout the day. They went in, threw everything upside down and then left empty-handed. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had seen anything. Nobody even knew what they were talking about. 

Their only hope were Marcelo and Cristiano, but their colleagues ran into the same dead-ends as them each time.

The hope inside Isco’s chest began to fizzle. It had never been a forest fire, but for a while it had held its place firmly against the wind, like a candle that refused to die. It was dying now.

James flipped around to face Isco. “What else? What are we missing?”

They were at last place on their list, an empty office in Chamartín. BayernM’s lease had ended last week and the place was in the midst of being vacated. They were the only people still there, the rest of their team having returned to the station a while back.

“Nothing. Maybe Lewandowski found a way to rent an apartment on his own. A way we couldn’t trace,” Isco dropped onto a couch opposite a large floor-to-ceiling window that covered an entire wall. The sun was setting behind the Madrid landscape. The leftovers of summer were finally on their way to disappearing. The night would be cold and merciless, draining the heat as quickly as it drained their chances of finding Toni alive.

“No, no. Come on. He’s Polish. He doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. He would know we were monitoring him, so he must have found a place before he made his presence known, most likely through BayernM. We’ve checked all their apartments, their office spaces, and their storage houses. _What else_?”

Isco watched James pace around the room. There wasn’t anywhere else. They had gone to all the properties they could connect to BayernM and hadn’t found anything. The only other way to find Toni was through their mole, but they were as close to that as they were when their search first started.

Robert Lewandowski was hiding somewhere untraceable. Isco couldn’t bear to think about what kind of tools to get the information he might have with him. He would have something. Hitmans always had something planned. They—

Isco jumped to his feet as if an electrical current had just gone through him, the next words rushing out of him. “Lewandowski would have gone to the place before he kidnapped Toni. He’s the obsessive type. He would have checked on the place, see if he had everything he needed. He would have gone there.”

“And Bale and Modrić would have seen him do it,” James finished.

They were out the door in seconds.

“Modrić,” Isco called him through the phone. “What places did Lewandowski visit these past couple of days? Locations that weren’t on the list of BayernM’s properties. Possibly somewhere he visited more than once.”

Modrić’s answer was immediate. Isco could kiss the man. “These past few days he didn’t leave his apartment much. I can only think of one place. An upscale bar downtown. He has gone there,” a slight pause, “three times.”

“Can you text us the address? And don’t tell anyone else,” asked Isco. They couldn’t risk Lewandowski being warned they were coming before they found him. 

“I can do the first thing, but not the second. I need to tell Iker. If not that, at least let me tell Sergio.”

“Give us thirty minutes then,” Isco asked. The desperation in his voice was impossible to ignore. Modrić’s reply came with some hesitation.

“Alright,” he said. “Done and done. Good luck.”

“Iker will be mad we’re doing this without backup,” James said after Isco had hung up the call.

“Iker has a mole to find,” Isco replied. James didn’t argue further. Isco didn’t think he would. He wasn’t the only one with the fear of god lodged in his throat.

The address Modrić texted them was for an apartment building in Chamartín, so the drive there took less than five minutes. They parked their car in front of the garage, the only parking spot available, with the police light on the roof. There was a significant chance that with or without the light, it would still get towed. They risked it anyway.

The bar Modrić mentioned was in the basement, so they started their search by asking the workers there if they’ve seen Lewandowski. They got negative responses from everyone except one of the bartenders just starting his shift.

“The Polish guy? Yeah, he was around once or twice. Thick accent. Only drank martinis. Tipped pretty well. Had a great ass too,” the bartender said. Isco resisted the urge to strangle him.

“Did he say anything while he was here?” he asked. 

The bartender stopped to think for a second, looking out the window before he met Isco’s eyes again. “I think he had some business in the area? I caught him on the phone once. He was angry about something, nearly yelling at the other guy. Something about running out of time and there being a cut? I don’t know, man. My English isn’t very good.”

“We appreciate your help,” James said. They walked out of the bar side by side, impatience on the sole of their feet.

“He has to be around here,” Isco muttered. They were so close. The frustration scratched his skin from the inside out. Toni had to be in the area. They couldn’t waste this opportunity.

James slapped Isco on the arm, breaking him out of his reverie. “Cameras,” he said, pointing at the camera in front of the bar’s entrance.

“Do you think…?” Isco started, not needing to finish his sentence since he was James were mentally connected at this point.

“There’s probably a few inside the building, yeah. Let’s go find the landlord or the maintenance room,” James suggested.

They didn’t find the landlord, but they did find a security woman taking a walk around the building. She was easily persuaded by the sight of their badges to show them the security tapes.

“Who are you looking for?” the security guard asked as they scrolled through the footage.

“Polish guy. Tall. Has a face that makes you want to punch him. Works as a hitman,” Isco said, earning himself an incredulous look from James.

The security guard, however, didn’t seem nonplussed. She clicked her tongue at them. “Try the camera in the garage.”

And then there they were. At four thirty in the afternoon, an annoyed Robert Lewandowski dragged an unconscious Toni Kroos through the parking garage. Toni was still wearing his pajamas pants and his bare feet dragged on the soot-covered ground. There was also something on his face.

“Is that blood?” Isco asked, leaning forward to take a better look at the screen.

“He must have woken up during the car ride,” James guessed.

“And then promptly knocked out again,” Isco added. If it was possible for someone’s vision to cloud from anger, his was a dark storm right now.

“Can you tell us what apartment they went to?” James asked the security guard.

“Way ahead of you,” she said, licking the tip of her black finger as she flipped open a notebook. “3F.” Isco and James straightened up, thanked her and made for the door. “Hey, hey. Shouldn’t you call for backup or something? They always call for backup on the TV shows.”

Isco glanced at James, who looked back with the same surprised look. “They’re already on their way,” he said. It wasn’t a lie.

As if right on queue, the second they left the room James got a call from Sergio, who opened the conversation with a meaningful, “You guys are idiots. Remember the last time you went in without waiting for backup?”

“Toni has been gone for a whole day. We don’t know what Lewandowski has been doing to him. We need to go get him,” Isco explained.

“You found him then?”

“At the address Modrić gave us. 3F,” Isco said. He stared at the elevator in front of him, but didn’t press the ‘call’ button.

“Then wait. We’re almost there. Fifteen minutes,” Sergio asked. There was a harsh mark of defiance in his voice that Isco knew was present in his own as well.

“If something happens—” Isco’s voice threatened to break. “Sergio, if something happens to him—“

There was the sound of the gas pedal being pressed with more strength on the other end of the line. “Ten minutes. Just _wait_.”

“Ten minutes. After that we’re going in,” James said as he took the phone out of Isco’s hand and ended the call. “He’ll be fine,” James added. Isco couldn’t tell if it was for his sake or for his own.

Isco imagined what Toni would look like somewhere safe with them close by. He pictured familiar scenes of comfort, late nights watching the Dallas Mavericks and early mornings watching Formula One. It didn’t matter whether or not Toni reciprocated their feelings. All that mattered was that they got him back, all in one working piece, and that they ended this case once and for all.

Isco paced the hallway while James leaned against the wall. They were both too on edge to talk. Time took too long to pass, but after nine excruciating minutes—and Isco couldn’t even picture how many traffic laws they must have broken to get there so quickly—Sergio and the others showed up. They were equipped from head to toe, which Isco didn’t question.

He put on the bulletproof vest someone handed to him and followed James. His thoughts began to vacate, replaced by mechanics he knew by heart. Go in, quiet and fast. Take in anyone suspicious. Get Toni back.

They broke down the door in one fluid motion and entered the apartment in a stream. Isco was in the middle of the group, with James and Sergio in front of him. Marcelo had his back while Cristiano and Iker held the rear. The apartment Lewandowski had rented was small, and it only took two steps into the living room for them to spot the man himself, holding a knife, with his back to them.

Isco’s fingers twitched, moving towards the trigger, but before they got there someone else—James, his brain informed him, filling him with pride—knocked out Lewandowski with a punch that would go down in the history books. Isco saw the man fall and started moving again, leaving Sergio and Marcelo to cuff Lewandowski.

His ears registered the silence in the apartment, somehow undisturbed by their presence. There was a stillness in the air, the kind that settled on top of his skin like an electric blanket. In one of the bedrooms, a plastic sheet covered the floor. Isco made his way there. His eyes searched for red, searched for blonde hair, searched for life.

Toni was in a bedroom, laid out in the center of a stripped bed. His hands were tied to the headboard with two green ropes. He was still wearing his pajamas.

There was blood.

There was a lot of blood.

It was years of repetition that got Isco to put away his gun safely instead of throwing on the ground like a wet paper towel. It was practice that had him scanning Toni for injuries, carefully, hesitant to move him, but not hesitant to check for a heartbeat. The only reason why his hands didn’t shake was sheer force of will.

“His pulse is steady. I can hear him breathing,” Isco said, the words coming out before he even processed them properly. He felt his chest expand as his entire body sighed in relief.

James hissed. “He has a bunch of cuts on his legs. They seem to be superficial.”

Isco glanced down. James had rolled up Toni’s pajamas pants and on each leg there were symmetrical wounds, from the ankle to the inside of his thigh. Some seemed deep, but none were currently bleeding, so James must be right.

There were more cuts on Toni’s arms, more scattered and not as big, but not a mark on his chest. His nose looked broken, which explained why there was so much blood, and his left eye was a gross shade of yellow that would soon turn black.

But more importantly than all that, he was alive.

A couple of tears nearly spilled from Isco’s eyes. He had to blink for a second too long to push them back. He could cry like a baby later. Right now, he had more important matters to attend to.

The tranquilizer gun Lewandowski had used on him was on the bedside table, alongside a knife covered in blood. Isco didn’t touch either of them. They would be used as evidence later. He helped James cut the ropes around Toni’s wrists and lift him until he was sat on the bed. James refused to move away from Toni. His hands brushed away dried blood and stroked Toni’s hair with a feather-touch. Isco stayed by their side, only moving to see Lewandowski being dragged out of the apartment.

“We’ll take him to the station,” Iker told him. Isco nodded in reply and then returned to Toni and James’ side.

When the paramedics came, Isco and James were forced to step back and let them do their job. They gave them a rundown of Toni’s injuries, which were mostly superficial like they’d guessed. He would have scars on his legs and arms, and it was hard to tell at this point how long it would take for him to heal. He was also out cold from whatever Lewandowski had given him, so they would have to flush that out of his system.

As they were leaving the apartment, Isco stopped James with a hand on his arm. “One of us should go to the station,” he said. James made a quizzical sound. “There’s going to be a lot of paperwork. I think I prefer to get it all out the way now rather than later.”

This way he wouldn’t have to leave Toni’s side while Toni was recovering.

“Do you want me to go?” James asked. Isco shook his head.

“Your handwriting is the most atrocious thing on earth. I’ll do it and I’ll meet you guys at the hospital in an hour. Keep him safe,” Isco said, relieved to find he could stand to joke around again.

He rode back to Arganzuela with Marcelo, who had the stereo turned to max the whole time and insisted on singing along to every song, even the ones he didn’t know the lyrics. Isco didn’t mind. He was numb to everything but the overwhelming sense of peace that had come over him the moment he checked Toni’s heartbeat.

At the precinct there was, as predicted, a ton of paperwork to get through. Isco made sure to file the more important documents, not bothering to lie about the situation with Modrić and the address. If someone wanted to fight him on this, he would gladly take them up on the offer.

On his way out, forty minutes later, Isco decided to stop by the interrogation room where they had locked Lewandowski in. Apparently they had yet to get anything out to the guy, who refused to speak in anything but Polish. Sami was in the room right now, trying to speak to him in German.

“Anything?” Isco asked, stepping inside a room adjacent to the room Lewandowski was being held in. Iker and Sergio were both there, watching the conversation unfold with equally irked expressions.

Sergio was the first to speak. “What an ass. He knows we have him. We caught him red-handed and have him booked for kidnaping, torture and a ton of other charges, and all he does is _smirk_. Absolute ass.”

“There’s no way he can get out of it, right?” Isco asked.

Before he joined the law enforcement, he would have betted all his life savings that they had enough evidence on Lewandowski to give him the maximum penalty. He wouldn’t make that bet nowadays. The law worked in funny ways, especially when gigantic international companies had something to lose.

“No, but he can ask to be trialled in Poland and I don’t know how that would work out. He’s not giving us any names either,” said Iker. In a quieter tone, he added, “ _coño de mierda_.”

Isco snorted. “Here’s a suggestion: we go in, we hit him hard in the face and we see where that takes us,” he said. He’d spent many, many hours of his childhood watching Buffy and he’d interiorized nothing but good advice.

“I’m with, Magia. Let’s hit him,” Sergio said, perking up for a moment, then visibly deflating when Iker looked at them with his special, one of a kind, _why did I ever hire you_ look.

Iker tapped the mirrored glass separating the two rooms. Without looking up, Sami let out a frustrated sigh and walked out of the room. Lewandowski remained behind, handcuffed to the metal desk. Isco still wanted to punch him.

“What did you get?” Iker asked Sami when the man joined the three of them.

“He gave me the number of his lawyer and that’s it. BayernM is either paying him an obscenely large paycheck or he’s a very loyal worker. Either way, I don’t think we can get him to talk.”

Sami sighed and Isco glanced from him to Iker, who seemed contemplative. Isco decided to take his chances.

“Give me five minutes with him,” he asked. Iker immediately frowned, so Isco kept going, refusing to give him time to voice his objections. “Just five minutes.”

Isco felt himself being scrutinized before Iker relinquished and said, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Isco nodded and left. He realized upon entering the interrogation room that he didn’t actually know what he wanted to say. His usual interrogation techniques wouldn’t work on someone like Lewandowski. Then again, Isco had never been too fond of going by the book.

He marched into the room without a hint of hesitation. Lewandowski’s eyes locked onto him. He smirked. Isco watched him.

“Is there a death penalty in Poland?” he asked as an icebreaker, pulling a Titanic and aiming straight for the iceberg. His English was rusty, but it god the job done.

Lewandowski’s smile grew larger. “No,” he replied.

Isco didn’t say, ‘what a shame,’ because he wasn’t that kind of man. He joined the police without a thirst for blood and he planned to die without one as well. However, he could definitely say that he wouldn’t spill any tears were Lewandowski to get shot in the head.

“Life imprisonment then?” 

For a fraction of a second, and almost inconspicuously, Lewandowski’s grin lost some of its strength. Isco felt the rage inside his chest turn into something colder, something more measured.

“You will get it,” Isco continued, not waiting for Lewandowski’s reply. “And after BayernM is taken to court, which will happen with Toni’s help, I am sure it won’t take long until the rest of your past is revealed and you get the sentence you deserve. How old are you? Twenty-eight? You still have a lot of time left and you’re going to spend it rotting in jail, and for what?”

Lewandowski watched him for a couple of seconds before he leaned back on his chair. Were his hands not handcuffed to one of the table legs, Isco was sure he would try to rest his feet on the tabletop. “What is done is done. You can’t change the past.”

“But you can make the future better. Just give us the names of who you’re working with. You’re about to spend the rest of your life in jail. At the very least, you should make sure you get some company.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Lewandowski replied. Isco shrugged, going for nonchalance. His five minutes were almost up.

Isco knew Lewandowski wasn’t going to speak. There were still too many cards to be revealed.Some were on their side, some were on his side. Whatever it was that Lewandowski knew had the man assured that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life in jail. Isco couldn’t fight that. He could, however, gloat.

“Well, that’s your choice then. A life in jail for a failed plot to kill someone. Well done,” Isco said. He tapped his knuckles and made to get up. He saw Lewandowski shift. Again, it was a minutiae reaction. Isco had struck a cord.

“You know, BayernM is a big company. We are in many places. Places where we’ve always been. Places you wouldn’t even suspect.”

Isco whipped around to face him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means the Kroos family is a founding pillar of BayernM. Toni Kroos has been with the company since birth.” Lewandowski grinned at Isco. “Tell Toni I missed him, will you? I’ve always liked him. He’s the quiet type, but he can drink you under the table and he’s great at making subtle jokes during meetings.”

Isco stared at Lewandowski. He took a step back, then another, until his hand reached the doorknob and he twisted the piece of metal. As soon as he stepped through the door, Iker and Sergio were there.

“Did he— He just said Kroos is working for them, didn’t he?” Sergio asked.

The ground beneath Isco’s feet began to tremble. “No, he wouldn’t. _He wouldn’t_.”

“BayernM could be using him as bait. A lot of people have come forward to be witnesses on the case because of Toni’s testimonial and the evidence he presented. This way BayernM could know who knows what,” Iker said.

“No,” Isco shook his head and bit his lips.

“Explains why Lewandowski isn’t worried. Kroos can say he went willingly after he wakes up,” Sergio added.

“Did you see him? He had cuts all over. He was _tortured._ ”

“He was probably under anesthesia. Didn’t even feel it,” Sergio said and Isco couldn’t believe this. He could not fucking believe this.

“I have spent the last four months living with Toni. I think I would know if he was some kind of spy or,” Isco glared at Iker, “bait.”

“Isco—“

“No, shut up. You’re the one who got Toni’s life in danger and now you’re willing to believe all this crap because some Polish guy said so?” Isco stared at Iker. He felt the blood in his veins tap against his temples, hot all over. Iker stared back, an ocean of stillness in his eyes. Iker sighed.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said.

Isco resisted the urge to say ‘damn right’. He didn’t have that much of a death wish.

“I’m going to call James and head to the hospital,” Isco replied. He gave Iker and Sergio a nod before he walked away.

He called James’ number, saved as ‘Jaaaaamez’ in his phone, and waited to hear that familiar voice.

The call went to voicemail.

Isco dialed his number again, meeting the same fate for the second time. He tried to remember who else had gone to the hospital with James. Marcelo? Maybe Modrić. He called his coworkers, but they were both in the precinct with him. A couple of people were gone, but most of them were meant to go home hours ago. Isco grabbed his jacket and searched for Carvajal.

“Can you give me a ride to the hospital?” he asked. No pleasantries, no anything.

Carvajal’s reply was immediate. “Sure, two seconds.”

Carvajal was a terrific driver, and by terrific what was meant was that if anyone ever realized a cop was behind the wheel there would be a media scandal on their ass. Isco appreciated him a whole lot right now.

“Everything okay?” Carva asked.

“Yeah, just, Lewandowski said something weird and now James isn’t picking up his phone. He’s probably just in the bathroom or something,” Isco guessed, trying for nonchalance.

“Alright,” Carva replied. He didn’t sound like he believed Isco, but he didn’t further question him either.

They spent the rest of the drive in silence. When they finally got to the hospital, after breaking the speed limit for ninety-percent of the journey, Carvajal asked, “Want me to come in with you?”

Isco shook his head. “Go home. I’ll talk to you later.”

Isco asked a nurse for Toni’s room and took the stairs, too restless to take the elevator. He knew Toni was fine. They’d saved him. Lewandowski had tried to feed him the typical, bullshit lies of someone who has a stick up their ass and doesn’t know how to take it out. There was no way Toni was still working for BayernM. No way.

Even as he thought that, he began to take the stairs two steps at a time.

Toni’s room was at the end of a long hallway. nurses and medical staff went from room to room. Isco pushed his jacket out until his badge, attached to his leather belt, was visible. His pace was too quick to be considered a walk, but just shy enough of being a jog. He got to Toni’s room and pushed the door open.

There was someone else there. Isco began to say, “James,” before he realized it wasn’t James there, but Xabi Alonso. There was a nervous current buzzing beneath his skin. He exhaled, relaxing for a microscopic second. Then he took in the scene in front of him.

Xabi Alonso stood next Toni’s bed, alone, with a pillow in his hands. Toni was still asleep. Xabi had a _pillow_ in his hands.

Somehow, Isco doubted he was fixing Toni’s bed so he would be more comfortable.

“You tie loving son-of-a-bitch.” 

Isco lunged. Xabi’s nose made a sickening _crack_ noise when Isco’s fist connected against it.

Isco didn’t stop there. His knee flew to Alonso’s crotch practically out of its own volition. Alonso said something that sounded like, “you little fucker,” so Isco hit him again and again, until two nurses at least ten centimeters taller than him pulled him off.

James showed up at some point. He was on time to hear Isco’s mad rambling. “It was him, James. The motherfucker tried to kill Toni.”

Through a psychic connection, James was able to put the right pieces together and handcuff a bleeding, moaning Xabi Alonso before he got the chance to make a run for it. It was only then that Isco relaxed. The nurses, skeptically and slowly, let go of him after he promised he wouldn’t do any more damage.

Two minutes later, Isco was tackled to the ground after kneeing Alonso in the balls for a second time.

Worth it.

 

* * *

 

Isco woke up to the sound of an American shouting about the most amazing game he’d ever seen in typical, hyperbolical American fashion. He pushed the covers off the bed and rolled into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes as he got up. He passed James’ room and peeked inside to see James still sound asleep. No surprise there. James was like a rock when he slept.

Isco kept walking until he got to the living room. He sat on the couch and immediately propped his legs on Toni’s lap.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, eyes on the television screen. They were watching a basketball game. Isco didn’t even attempt to pay attention. 

“Yeah. I just— I keep seeing him.”

Toni sounded so pained and tortured that Isco immediately reached forward. He pulled the German until they were both lying on the couch, which was definitely not made to fit two grown men in horizontal positions. They made it work anyway.

“Wake me up the next time it happens, and James too. We’ll keep you company,” Isco offered.

“You don’t have to.”

Isco rolled his eyes. “Of course I do. I wake up ten times a night anyway with the need to check up on you. I may or not have watched you sleep a couple of times. It’s kind of creepy. I’m not sorry.”

Isco’s reply got the desired reaction, which was a laugh from Toni. The sound was muffled against Isco’s neck. Isco tightened his grip on his friend.

Toni had been discharged from the hospital two weeks ago. He’d flown to Germany four days later, testified in a closed courtroom, then flew back to Spain. The case was far from over, but that was the end of his role. He had done what he had signed up to do and a lot more after that.

Isco was finally sure of how he felt about Toni’s actions. He had settled on pride.

They had moved to a new place, outside of the city, and had barely left the house since. James and Isco’s roles as Tony’s babysitters were also over, but in the grand scheme of things, that meant nothing to them. They had asked for all their vacation days and then a couple more that they didn’t have and were now using them wisely to keep Toni company.

Xabi Alonso and Robert Lewandowski were in jail, awaiting trial. Isco would have to testify at some point, but for once, he was fine with the court system taking its due time. Let them rot there. It was the least they both deserved.

There were nightmares. A lot of them. Toni didn’t remember much of what Lewandowski had done to him, or at least he said he didn’t, but he remembered enough. The nightmares didn’t afflict only him, though. Isco hadn’t lied when he said he had trouble sleeping.

One of the first things Toni did when he got back was call his brother. They talked on Skype for ages, but other than promising to keep in touch, Toni didn’t say anything about leaving. He did mention he wanted to look for a job as an accountant or maybe a translator. Not right now, but at some point in the future. Isco knew that eventually, things would be all right again.

Toni shifted around until he was lying on Isco, who didn’t mind the weight. This way Toni could continue watching the game while Isco got to watch the ceiling and count Toni’s breaths. It was a win-win situation.

Eventually, James padded out of his bedroom, probably disturbed by the sound of Toni cheering every so often after a good dunk. He took a glance at the Isco and Toni and started walking towards them.

“If you lie on top of us, I swear to god I’m going to—“ all the air was pushed out of Isco’s lungs in a painful pull as James lied down on top of them, “kill you,” Isco finished in the strangled voice of a broken man.

James patted his head and didn’t even apologize. Asshole.

They’d kissed a couple of times since they’d found Toni. They were all simple kisses, like an extension of their beings. They had kissed to say ‘hello’ and they had kissed to say ‘goodbye’. Isco was waiting for James to say something to Toni, but the other man had yet to do so. Isco wasn’t sure if he had changed his mind or if he was waiting for something.

Isco pushed up the fabric of Toni’s shirt and rested his hands on Toni’s hips. Toni made a small humming noise on the back of his throat, a sound of agreement, and didn’t try to push him away.

There was so little platonic about their relationship, but Isco couldn’t be sure if they were all on the same page until they talked about it.

“Hey, Toni,” Isco said, grabbing the attention of the two men squishing him. “What would you do if I kissed you?”

Both Toni and James froze. Isco stared at the ceiling, refusing to meet their eyes. His plan was maybe not the best since it involved no escape solution and literally no subtlety. Maybe he could push them both off him in a burst of energy and run to the door? Or should he go for the window? They lived on the third floor, but Isco could make it out alive. Probably.

“What?” Toni asked. This was Isco’s opportunity. He could take back his words, pretend he’s too sleep-addled to know what he’s talking about. Isco saw James stare at him, an incredulous smile lifting the corners of his lips. Isco swallowed.

“What would you do if I kissed you?” 

“I would kiss you back?” Toni said, sounding so unsure that it came out as a question rather than a statement.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, Isco thought, and leaned up to kiss Toni.

It was a difficult kiss. The angle worked against them and there was little they could do about it in their current positions. Still, they made it work. One of Toni’s hands found the back of Isco’s neck. His blunt fingernails scraped Isco’s scalp as he pulled Isco closer to him.Toni’s lips tasted like coffee, overly sweet from all the sugar Toni loved to put in his drink. On the television screen, the commentators had a fit over some amazing shot. Isco thought he could spend eternity like this.

Isco was the first to pull away, having forgotten how to breathe through his nose. He stared at Toni, who stared back with his ever so blue eyes and his unwavering confidence. He didn’t look scared. Good.

“This is nice,” James said. His words could be taken as a sarcastic comment if it weren’t for how genuine they sounded. James smiled at both of them, warm as always, and Isco smiled back.

Toni, on the other hand, couldn’t see James smile. “Sorry. Oh god, I’m sorry. Should I…“ he started to say, pausing mid-sentence when he seemed to realize he had no idea what he was meant to do.

“Turn around,” James asked. To make space, James lifted himself up on his arms, leaving Toni to shift in the space between their two bodies. Why they were doing this while lying down was a mystery to Isco, who got all the air sucked out of his lungs when they lied against him again.

“You know, you can do this while standing up,” Isco offered, making James laugh.

“You started it,” James said and then he kissed Toni.

Isco couldn’t see them kiss, but he could hear them and he could use his creative imagination with ease to imagine what they looked like. It was quite a distracting thought. “We have beds? As anyone ever thought about the fact that we have beds?” he asked.

James laughed again, this time against Toni’s lips, before he crawled above Toni’s body. “Thanks for the valuable input,” he said before he leaned down to kiss Isco. He was definitely being sarcastic now. Go figure, this was the type of person Isco would fall in love with.

James bit down on Isco’s bottom lip until Isco opened his mouth and then he kissed the living daylights out of Isco, who was just beginning to feel like he had things in control again.

This was a nice loss of control, though. He couldn’t say he had any complaints.

“That’s— yeah— okay,” Isco said after James had let go of him. He would remember how to use words in a bit, he just needed a moment.

James looked ever so proud of himself, but the smugness didn’t last long as he turned to Toni and asked, “Is this alright?”

Toni, faster than the rest of them, seemed to have already caught up with the proceedings. His answer was a quick, “Yes, definitely,” before he kissed James again and okay, okay, but seriously. “We have beds,” Isco whined.

With a groan, James got up. Toni moved next, using the couch as a support for his weight and not Isco, thank the heavens. The second Isco was up, Toni was pulling him in for another kiss. This one made Isco feel simultaneously light-headed and provoked and there was no doubt about it, these men were going to be the death of him one day.

Toni pulled him towards his bedroom, following James, who was two steps ahead of them. Without any ceremony, because again, Isco had a type and that type seemed to be beautiful asshole with a heart of gold, Toni dumped Isco on the bed and started making out with James.

“The last four months count as dating, right? Because I gotta tell you guys, I’m not the type of man who puts out without getting at least five dates first,” Isco said. He could give as good as he got, and if Toni and James were going to kill him by making out in front of him and looking obscenely attractive, he could at least set them even further on edge.

James groaned. “You are just asking to be shut up.”

Isco knew where this was going and he was so on board. From the glint in his eyes, he could tell Toni was interested in the new course of action as well. Isco was on his knees in seconds.

So yes, death at the hands of his best friends, turned boyfriends. Isco was more than okay with his fate.

**Author's Note:**

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> Super cute, amazing drawing was made by the lovely [flowercrownfootball](http://flowercrownfootball.tumblr.com/post/117836568076/the-rabbits-foot)!
> 
> Comments are deeply appreciated and loved, be it either honest critiques or just some positive feedback. Thank you so much for reading. You can follow me on my [tumblr](http://iscokroos.tumblr.com/) if you'd like! ♥


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